Just a small doodle update with something I did today! Unfortunately having a full time job is kind of putting a cramp in my drawing time.
Just a small drawing of Speak. It’s a little out of character for her to be on the subway, but anything is possible. Hopefully will be introducing her in the next issue of The Gentlemen.
I just happened to take a bunch of screenshots while working on my most recent piece, so I thought I’d do a little process breakdown! This was just a fun little project I was doing.
First!! The sketch.
I did this in photoshop with just the new round paintbrush. The majority of my work looks like this in the beginning! I actually enjoy working in blue, so I haven’t adjusted the colours on this, like I have to do with my pencils. Anyway! I tried inking this in photoshop but it wasn’t looking like how I wanted it to, so I printed it off!
This is literally right off the scanner. I hated the nib I was working with for this one. It was just too…stiff. If only my new ones had come in the mail by then! Sigh. Oh well. From here I usually bump up the black in the line work, and the white of the paper. Then I replace colour the blues into white. It all disappeared quite nicely. I take the lines over to a new file at the size I want (11×17 in this case). (I pull the lines out by converting to greyscale, then in channels I ctrl click, invert selection, and copy! It grabs everything pretty nicely, though it usually requires a black fill to get rid of a little bit of a white outline.)
I laid in the flats of the colours I wanted, with the lasso. Then, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use black lines or make them coloured.
I asked my friend, SJ Romm, what she thought. I do this a lot. She’s my writer and my favourite idea board. Throughout working on a piece I often screenshot and send links to her for input. We decided black lines looked better.
I shaded! I paint everything with that round brush now. Haha! I used a little glow effects on the magic effect, for you know…cool looking stuff. At this point I kind of knew where I wanted to go, which was to create a kind of used looking poster, but I didn’t really have the textures I wanted to work with. I spent a little while looking around for what I needed.
The next three images are pretty straightforward! This is me finishing. I’m tweaking a few things and going for input and then changing it until I get to a place I like.
I got a paper, some coffee rings, a sponge texture. The font is the same one I used for the front of the first issue.
Got rid of the white sponge. I liked it but thought it obscured the coffee ring too much. I changed “The Gentlemen” to all caps for ease of readability. Changed “daily fires!” on SJ’s recommendation, since it flows better, matches the rest of the sentence. I wanted one last thing though…
The final! I know the blood is a teeny cheesy, but I think it’s kind of indicative of the kind of people The Gentlemen really are. Heheh.
Thanks for checkin it out! As usual right click -> view image to see anything at a bigger size!
See you at FANEXPO this Weekend!!
Sorry for the long silences and awkward pauses. I’ve been getting ready for FanExpo!! Whoo!
First and foremost I will be there with my buddies Frances Lee, Alex Boake, and Melanie Banks, we’re at booth A176! We’re right by DC Comics. So exciting. Check out the little map to scope us out, we’re in front of a pillar, so go to DC Comic and look for a pillar in the artist alley! There you will find pretty girls with rad art.
Here’s a few of the things I’ve been working on-
First – A Ramona Flowers! She was the first victim of the new way of ‘inking’ I’m working on with the new CS5 brushes. Gonna have a few prints of these on a really nice bristol for the con.
A couple more things done with this way- something inspired by a song – St. Vincent’s “Paris Is Burning”, and a poster size drawing of one of my characters from The Gentlemen; Jaq. I’m going to have 11×17 prints of these, and possible a couple small prints as well.
Lastly- and work in progress- Inspired by the latest Game Informer covers I decided to do a little Catwoman portait! She’s comin along.
Now, for the big news!! I picked up my books today!! The Gentlemen is finally in print! They look great, and I’m super stoked for them. I’ll have them out for $5 at FanExpo. :D
As usual, right click > view image to see anything a little bit bigger! See you guys in two weeks!
Tried out Paint Tool Sai today, and I really like it! Just sketched up this Rumor
Right click > View Image to embiggen
A couple things I’m working on right now…
This’ll be for Anime North once I’m done. It’s sad that it’s so difficult for me to do fan art. Sigh. I have an awful Ezio in my sketchbook too but he’s not gonna be going anywhere remotely good.
Want to make this into a wallpaper. This is already inked, but i haven’t scanned it back in yet. hmm.
I think I have a sad infatuation with some of my own characters. I just like to draw them in backstory situations. I dunno. Speak, looking sort of how she would’ve before joining The Gentlemen. In my head, anyway. :) Not something that I could see ever making its way into pages of story, but I think it helps me develop the characters deeper to do this sort of thing. They eventually kind of drive themselves.
A couple more on the flickr, which you can get to through the images anyway. :)
Page Two!!! You can now read the first eight pages in whole at my website www.kristimcc.com
I hope you enjoy what I’ve got so far!
Expect some more in the future, and I plan to have print copies of this available for FanExpo this summer.
Just a little preview of what I’ve been working on, and why my update on Ad Astra fell off the face of the planet. I was inking these in the hotel room inbetween panels.
Page one of The Gentlemen.
Kristi McConnell Illustration 