Legion of Super Pets Commission

The Pets Are Back!

Comet, Krypto, Beppo and Streaky are mourning a rather dead Proty.

I put the finishing touches on this commission this morning.

The inks took a bit longer than I thought, but I think mostly due to the fact I used about 90% brush. I love using brush, but with my regular comic pages I usually go with a brush pen to save time. The quality of actual art on board isn’t as nice with brush-pen but once scanned it’s not an issue. In this case though I wanted only the best.

I did struggle a bit with the background. The final didn’t stray too far from the sketch, but while working on it, when I spotted the blacks ,I almost worried that I went too far. That the spotted blacks looked too flat.

I slept on it and actually attempted on scanned and printed copy a splatter technique to give the background a greyer tone. Had I had some zipatone I might have tried that.

The splatter technique failed though and I just wasn’t digging it. Sometimes it works great, but in this case it would have just not worked the way I envisioned.

I then just went back to my sketch and inked in some texture to soften the blacks and… well it just worked. I was happy.

Sometimes the simple solution is the best

Process Video

Lately, I try to record as much as I can when I do pieces like this. In this case I could only record portions but it gives you an idea of my process. You’ll see that when I start the video I’ve already inked in the outlines of the typography. I figure if I screw up there it’s better to start over and not have wasted all the fun of inking the characters. But if I get that right then the rest is usually a breeze.