Well, I’ve finally finished a second issue of Variables. It’s both weird and frustrating to have two issues in the books. Weird because it feels like I’ve been doing this forever but in reality, it’s only been a little over a year. Frustrating in that “how have I finished only two issues?”

At this point, it’s back to the 1992 arc to finish issue two. This shouldn’t take long, as I only have ten pages left in the issue until completion. Over the weekend, I started on the first draft of issue three and if there was a way I could magically finish issue two and start drawing that instead, I would. There are all sorts of crazy awesomeness that happens and my excitement about the 1992 arc has been rekindled. I can’t wait to start work on the visuals for it. Issue two also has a lot of great stuff and I should be excited to work on that as well but it isn’t the new hotness so I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about. On the other hand, the first page (partially penciled as I write this) looks so much better than my earlier stuff that it’s crazy to look at one page and then the other.

On this page, I started using what has become a pretty popular inking trick… I fling ink at the page. You’ll notice it around his cheeks and around the smoke. I’ve seen a lot of artists use this in the past and this page was missing something after I finished inking it like a normal person. So I busted out a card and started flicking the quill at the page, splattering ink all over the place. I like it. It’s not the sort of thing you can do for every panel but when there’s action that makes clean, straight inks look a little too polished for their own good, this is a nice trick to loosen up the inks and give the panel a little more “mess” to make it look more dynamic. It’s definitely something I’ll be using in future pages.

That’s about it for this morning. Click here to jump to the issue in progress of Varibles!

 

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