Hello to all. I find myself in a place where I am in-between ideas for my next page layout of sequential panels. When I get like this what I like to do to get the juices going is to look at other art and see if I can get some inspiration. If that does not work then I just practice an aspect of my drawing skills. I believe if you want to be a truly versatile comic book illustrator you need to know how to do many of the different things involved in comic art production. Most of the time I pencil, but my first love is inking. It is how I first started and what I feel is one of my best strengths. While looking at other art for inspiration, I stumbled across this Batman drawing by David Finch, who is currently illustrating Moon Knight for Marvel Comics Entertainment.


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Batman, Copyright 2006 DC Comics and Warner Brothers Communication. All Rights Reserved

I really liked the pencils on this page and thought, heck why not ink it. Well needless to say it was a matter of biting off a little more than I could chew. I had no idea how intense the pencils were until I actually started laying inking on them. Whew, that Finch dude can really draw and his rendering is absolutely awesome and beautiful. The piece took me about 5 hours to complete and although I worked on a really small size, 8 1/2" by 11", I really like the finished piece:




Batman, Copyright 2006 DC Comics and Warner Brothers Communications. All Rights Reserved

One of the great things about doing this sort of excercise is that you learn little tricks and techniques that other artist use and that you can then apply to your own work to enhance it. I am pleased with the way it turned out and it was well worth the time invested in it since I learned so much. Until the next time, keep it real.

Cesar-