inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 15: legend.
as you probably noticed i’m behind. and skipping around.
inspiration for the giant book that link consults is the lindsfarne bible, which i’d never heard of before doing the research for this strip.
this is the first day this year that i used a wash.
i got lazy and tired this strip. it shows in the final two panels
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 12: dragon
made some changes to the way i worked on today’s inktober and it really helped.
the final piece looks more like i imagined.
here’s how it went down. (if you find this sort of thing just mindnumbingly boring, here’s the color version, colored digitally, of today’s piece
here is the initial sketch
then i hunted down a bunch of reference of alex honnold climbing el capitan
i didn’t really use any one image in particular, but it helped me refine my early sketches
for the dragon’s pose i just did an image search for sleeping dogs.
all of that reference helped me refine the drawing and make it more convincing…
i think the sketch, done digitally, has a lot more energy than the final inks.
the biggest change to my work came in the next step.
i haven’t been happy with my inking at all, this inktober, so i decided to draw bigger. i’ve been watching a lot of cartoonist kayfabe lately and somewhere in there ed piskor said ‘pencil small and ink big.’
i’ve been drawing each panel at 4 x 4 inches all inktober. last night i decided to go bigger.
i resized the panels to be 5 x 5 inch and worked on 11 x 14 inch bristol instead of 9 x 12 inch bristol
inking at the larger size made all the difference for me.
i was able to vary the line weight more than in every previous inktober. it took way longer to work, but it was worth it.
it felt like a breakthrough.
now i just have to do it again tonight…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 11: snow
i’m pulling a swerve and giving day 10 a miss because i have an idea for pattern that i need a little more time on.
so here’s today’s:
it works a lot better in color
the way i drew these snowflakes makes them look like potato chips, don’t you think? maybe i’m just hungry
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 9: swing
(i know it’s the 10th. i’m behind.)
i also did a digital color version
lately i’ve been doing the sketch digitally, and inking over that
here’s the sketch
my sketches are better than my inks, but i guess that’s the whole point of inktober, right?
i did splash some watercolors on the page
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 8: frail
view the color version, where color reveals a little more information about one of our characters…
forgot to ink in her boots, and squandered link’s pose in panel 2, but this effort felt much stronger than day 7’s
the main thing i need to remember when working is just to slow down. all of the pressure is imagined…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 7: enchanted
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 6: husky
as i continue to struggle with the drawing of day 5: build, i’m moving on to day 6. only a day late.
for all of you inktober purists out there, here’s today’s strip in glorious black and white
if you’d like to see the comic in majestic color, please click here
i think the gag is solid, but man, panel 3 was a lost oppotunity
i should have pushed the pose more
(hangs head in shame)
(shuffles solemnly back to the drawing table)
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 4: freeze
can you spot what link is missing in panel 3? seems like i forget to draw something every day.
i didn’t have any ideas going in to fit the the prompt, but i read about the freezors, and once i started getting the pencil moving the gag came to me
i’m a little more satisfied with the gestures today
i also realized i’ve been casting my little guy as link this whole time
i didn’t love link’s poses in yesterday’s comic, so today i tried to push them a little bit more – make them more natural
here is today’s comic with a little color
even more importantly, when posting my comic to instagram yesterday, i discovered that linktober was already a thing!
you can follow linktober on instagram or visit them at their website
linktober continues
jake parker’s inktober 2019 official prompt: mindless
penciled this piece 2 days ago
felt less than confident about it
inked it late last night after my soccer game
hated it. told myself i’m going to throw it out in the morning
in the morning i looked at it again and accepted it. (after adding a lot of correction fluid)
added watercolors. felt better about it
but if the original is too pricey, you can check out the cleaned up, digitally colored version where i remembered to color link’s hair pink (WHY IS LINK’S HAIR PINK IN ‘LINK TO THE PAST’?)
doodled bones and kirk while watching star trek 3 the search for spock
hadn’t seen it in years (you can read my inauthentic haiku review on letterboxd where i’ve been writing inauthentic haiku reviews for the latest movies i’ve watched)
admittedly kirk in this doodle is a little more ‘wrath of khan’ than ‘search for spock’ (i love the ‘wrath of khan’ uniforms)
and man, shatner’s likeness is way more difficult to capture than deforest kelley’s. something about kirk’s posture in this sketch helped quite a bit
previous star trek mentions on screentone:
for some reason i can’t make a new comics collection for these, but if you’d like to catch up, here’s a link
i’m starting to dig these guys
my series of sh•••y drawings continues with peter parker burning the midnight oil
i think i forgot to draw his left arm
is this drawing too sh•••y? can you tell he’s in a dark room looking through a microscope at a sample
onward!
a sh•••y prowler ink and watercolor sketch based on my memory of the character from the new spidey-verse movie. go see it. it’s so good
killer cartoonists ed piskor and jim rugg‘s cartoonist kayfabe coverage of wizard magazine has got me drawing all these sh•••y drawings of superheroes i haven’t drawn in decades…
blurry image courtesy of my dying iphone
and the eighth screennotes newsletter went out today. subscribe if you need an intermittent email in you inbox (the last one went out in october)
or check out the archive
spidey swinging home after a long day of spider-manning
i like to think that his costume is in a constant state of repair. hastily stitched together.
and his webbing, though awesome, is never quite perfect. every batch a little different.
media:
i need some whiteout to fix the bubble butt i gave spidey in the one where his spidey sense is going crazy
both very different from each other
i’ve been working on today’s strip for-ev-er and my results are still mediocre. a frustrating lack of skill
i’ve got so many versions of this that look even worse
i’ll have to post them some time
since this strip works best horizontal, it will probably look best for you here (and it’s in color)
you can also view a color version here
another new steps strips for the 30 days of comics
old snake from metal gear solid 4
eating some watermelon in a bombed out building
this ones a bit of a hot mess
you can tell its a hot mess because i had to explain the drawing
here’s the sketch
inktober 2018 is over:(
its been a…slice
a little metal gear solid 3 action with volgin giving snake a jolt
you even get the sketch
where else can you get deals like this
day 29: double
so here’s a little paper, rock, scissors between twin snakes; metal, and liquid
its hard to believe that this inktober is winding down already…
it’s been so much fun, and somehow, less stressful than last year
i don’t know if my results have been any better, but the schedule was easier to keep for some reason
hopefully  i can keep it up because i’m going to head right in to 30 days of comics in november.
what’s in the box?
it’s a cardboard box!
very useful in the metal gear franchise
