Looking at all the neat sketches and artwork going up kind of prompted me to send something that I was working on, just to show that I'm still getting that creative urge whenever possible.  More to come, whenever I can spur myself into it...

Blue line pencil on sketchbook paper, histogram modified for clarity.

Nathan, really nice drawing. I like the one in the "Tangled" art book.

And here is a caricature of a captain not so appreciate around here...

Most recent ST series, Didier?  Well done, I'd say.

I got to ink and color in my girl from the pencil sketch on the previous page.  An old #2 Micron and Prismacolor pencils.

One thing I also did recently was download someone's 64-color PSP pallette from one of the comicbook websites.  I'll be using this one as my pallette for artwork from now on, give or take a few tweaks.  Maybe the next thing I post will showcase what I can do in Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 9.0.

     I'm sort of on a roll now.  Took another little sketch that I started up around the time I did the portrait above and inked it (getting a little more mileage out of the old Microns).

     I've been thinking of using the method that I read about in the latest Draw! magazine articles (Spring 2011 issue).  They showcased Walter Simonson, and I was fascinated to find that he actually finishes the art in the inking stage over breakdowns of his pages.  Granted, I don't have a professional grade light table to work off of, but it sounds like a winner if you're working under professional comicbook publishing deadlines. 

     So I did basically the same.  Took the really light blue line pencil sketch, added a few more lines to get what I was trying to get on the page, and then inked it all in.  It works!

     Too bad certain "professionals" hired into the field these days don't get the drift of what Uncle Walt's been doing all these years.  He, John Byrne, and a certain "King" of comics whom we all miss will run circles around all those kids who're too busy "growing their roses" these days...

Now for the colored pic!

     One thing I'm finding out about the 64-color palette is that it's quite limited in the choice of colors.  I intended for the character's skin to be quite lighter than that (almost an albino), and there really wasn't much choice of what to color the keyboards and equipment she was using.  It really must've been a juggling act for those guys back in the pre Baxter paper days.

     That may explain why, when the comicbook industry switched to a more extensive 128-plus color palette when they upgraded their material during the late 1980s, they had an increased variety of tones to use for different lighting effects, skin tones, etc.  Now, we have millions of computer-generated colors on shiny cover stock pages, and nobody seems to have any idea how to make a page stand out.

My latest...mostly sharpies, though I've just purchased some pitt pens, which I used for some of the finer details on this piece.