Prettay good

I originally drew this head shapes page over a couple of weeks in May 2020. It was unplanned and started as just a small A6 canvas to practice using the real g-pen in clip studio paint. It’s always kinda bugged me that it’s a ridiculous size for print and I’ve considered redrawing it larger a few times since.

I’m still trying to get better at inking over blue line so thought I’d enlarge the head shapes page to A3 and give it a go.

I tackled the low stakes stuff first, initially inking with a carbon pen but it felt a little stiff (I was gripping the pen too hard, wearing out my wrist). I switched to a Pentel Arts Duopoint Flex pen that I picked up in Poland a few years back, it’s double ended with an ultra fine nib and a flexible brush. The lines went down much smoother and I was getting a nice variation between thick and thin. The only drawback, it’s water based, something I realised when I used the posca white paint pen for highlights. It looks like the posca pen also irritatingly mixes with the water based cyan ink from the printer too.

March 2024

Nada

Nothings

Pen to paper

I tried out a Tombow brush pen this week and it’s pretty great, nice line variation from thick to thin but just a little too chunky for the small stuff. I added some details and hatching with a carbon pen and some uni-pin fine-liners. After scanning and removing the blue line, the carbon pen lines are much clearer than the uni-pins. It’s also much easier to ink with the carbon pen, something akin to a dip pen without all the dipping.

10 Captain Britain

Tried something a bit different for Captain Britain using the symmetry ruler in clip studio paint. In hindsight looking at my initial roughs (below) I probably would have had more fun with a heroic/action pose.

09 Death Metal

Day 09 of #marveluktober is the ever so shiny and somewhat homicidal Death Metal! Believe it or not I attempted a version of this on paper and spent about an hour on it. Needless to say it did not work out so I quickly sketched up something in clip studio paint before going a little OTT with the texture. Some of it works I think… I mean I like the thumb print brush stuff in the background.

04 Baron Blood

Got a little lazy with this one towards the end and relied heavily on the thumb print brush and ink spatter to fill in the bulk of the figure. I’m not entirely sure the composition works but I’m happy with the Mignolaesque background and general horror vibe.

03 Dark Angel

Always loved this character, had some fun with the shading using a thumb print brush and stippler, such an awesome effect.

02 Methinx

Here’s some initial sketches trying to figure this guy out, I was planning on a landscape orientation to vary these a bit.

The pencils and ink close-up produced in Clip Studio Paint for Day 02: