If anyone is paying attention, you must have realized by now that I'm awful at "blogging". Most likely I've been dispensing my personal brand of wit and wisdom through other various "social media outlets", and hopefully you've found me on one of the 3 I frequent. If not, MY BAD.

Anyhoo, Christmas has come and gone and now the New Year is upon us. Been a miserable ride for most of the world lately, and I won't get into my personal opinions here (most of you know how I feel about things anyway), but I'll try and post some more art as the New Year progresses. After all, it's about all we've got left! (Slipped an opinion in there)

So here is the 2nd level of page creation (according to my process, 3rd if I wasn't writing the page)... THE PENCILS! In this particular instance I worked on 100lb Bristol paper, unlined. I'd recommend using a better quality paper if you can, I work… — So here is the 2nd level of page creation (according to my process, 3rd if I wasn't writing the page)... THE PENCILS! In this particular instance I worked on 100lb Bristol paper, unlined. I'd recommend using a better quality paper if you can, I worked with what I could afford here at the time. In the end I don't think it makes much of a difference other than finesse and time (I've heard stories that the paper Jack Kirby used was so cheap and pulpy that a certain inker had to literally IRON them down before he could lay any ink), so use what you can afford!
At this time I was using a regular old #2 pencil, like the one us old fogies used to fill in "Scantron®" tests, because I didn't know any better. These days I use a blue pencil, which saves an incredible amount of time due to NOT ERASING. I can't tell you the hours spent erasing after inking, then having to clean it more in photoshop when it'd been scanned. With the blue pencil it's a matter of erasing the blue lines in the computer, and poof! they're gone. But again, here I was just using a standard pencil.
As you can see here, I went ahead and wrote the lettering in there. The publisher was a little taken aback by this, as it is far from standard these days to include letters in the art, but that's the only way I knew how to do these things. I felt (and still do) that it's part of the composition and should be treated as such, and thankfully (with the weight of O'Barr behind me) the publisher accepted this with no problem at all. I just wish I were better at it.
So now it's all laid out (I darkened them in photoshop for the publisher's sake) and ready for ink! Yay!