Inks (Speedball for colors and Higgins for blacks)
Bristol Board
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This is a commission for three characters from the Puppet Master series - which happens to be one of my favorite horror series. This was a lot of fun. I did all of the line work with brushes, which was a little different for me, as I usually ink with either pens or nibs.
So here's a little look into the process... Hope you enjoy.
Also, if anyone every has any questions, feel free to ask.
So, I first obviously sketched everything out... Only Blade (the center character) has any amount of detail, the rest were pretty much just blocked out to be sure I spaced everything correctly (a problem I used to run into a lot before I started blocking EVERYTHING out first.)
The pencil is kind of hard to see in the first one below but basically it's just a bunch of circles and rectangles. With eyes...
Then I started inking... I started in the center with blade bust because it made sense as he is the main character in this piece and the only character pretty much shown in his entirety.
More inking... Starting to get the basics for the whole piece inked. This is another thing I was making a conscious effort to do because I always get obsessed with one part and spend all my time on that part. I am this way with everything: If I had a burger and fries I eat the fries completely before I touch the burger... I never mix... Just the way I am I guess.
Inking away, making sure I get everything blocked in and then will go back to do details and touch ups. All of the line work is with either a 000 brush or a 2... I will go back later and thicken some of these lines - For now I'm just sort of blocking everything in again but with ink this time and getting more of the basic facial features in place rather than just shapes.
Then you'll see here I can't help myself and start adding some color before I even add the character to the right (Tunneler, with a drill head)... I was thinking about how I was going to approach the bandanna and just couldn't wait. Fucked if I am not one of the most impatient people I know...
So now I am blocking out the character on the right with pencil - his original design was so sketchy I didn't feel comfortable going in with inks. Granted his design is super-simple but still... I could see myself diving in thinking it would be fine and screwing it up - I had put in too much time by now to be so brazen.
Also, you'll notice I print reference photos... Lot's of them. Each character had about 3-4 photos I printed of various angles and I had a few pages of revolvers... I use a lot of reference materials. The combination of Google searching and printing and staring at them helps me get familiar with the subject matter. Often I'll also sketch the characters a bunch although in this case since I know the movies well I didn't feel the need to.
Playing in the background was Curse of the Puppet Master (thanks Netflix!)
Now I am pretty much wrapping up, going back and cleaning up some lines as well as adding some white highlights and the detail in the bandanna...
And that's it! In actuality I went back and did a little more work after this photo but, truth be told, I am too lazy to go back and take another picture at this point in time...
The photo of the finished piece washes out a little of the subtle details but alas, at a larger scale than a scanner, I'll need to find out a way to do a larger format scan... In the meantime this will do.
Thanks for checking this out. Catch you all later.
Kevin
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