I know everyone’s sick of looking at the same handful of panels, but I’m still experimenting with ink. I liked the look of my Elmo cartoon yesterday, which was done with my Kuretake brush pen. Its softness lends itself to looser, thicker lines, so even if I’m tracing a pencil drawing, it’s bound to feel less stiff. There’s still a part of me that wants to get that smooth crowquill look of, say, Blondie or Pogo, but at my current skill level I should probably either go for the looser look, or give up and ink on the computer.

I’m torn. Inking is fun, and I’ll get better with practice, but I feel like I’m sucking the spontaneity out of my sketches. My life drawing teacher mentioned that some particular artist (I have the memory of a 35-year-old) would sketch just the important points and curves of a figure, and then would connect those curves with swift, smooth strokes of ink instead of “chicken scratches.” So I think my next experiment will be to pencil by placing enough landmarks to ground my inking, but with enough gaps to allow me to feel a little more free with my hand.

Yep, still occasionally drawing naked ladies. The paper was actually white, but as I was rolling through my Photoshop presets I thought of today’s title.

I sketched this a few days ago, but it accurately represents the way I feel when I have nothing interesting to post!