Devi: From a Time Ago Redux

So last weekend I was at the art supply shop with a hefty Christmas gift certificate in hand, ready to splurge on some much needed supplies plus some new goodies I was willing to experiment with. I wasn't able to get all I needed (with the exception of the black (100) Copic wide marker sold with the black inker set, the Copic wide markers weren't being carried by the store...yet) but I still managed to get quite a bit, including a new brushpen to experiment with: the Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen (B).

As practice, I felt like revisiting one of my old drawings "Devi: From a time ago..."

So, in other words, this is my first fan art post! Yippy Skippy! It's also my first post in which decide to show you some of the work-in-progress (WIP) scans!

Let's have a look, shall we?

Yeah, I tend to use really light pencils when I do initial sketches. Most the time, it's a 4H or 3H pencil if I'm working on rough shapes and general concepts and a 3H or 2H (depending on how confident I am) for the definite line art. If I'm feeling super confident, I'll go with a standard HB pencil. In this case, I was working with a 3H pencil.

Here's where I decided to play around with the new brushpen and use a more "sketchier" look I employed during an inking excercise in my comic book production class. I normally don't do my inking like this (my lines are generally much cleaner looking these days) but this particular style was so fun and freeing that I really wanted to give it another try. Who knew being overly faithful to sketchy pencil lines could lead to such an enjoyable (well, for me anyway because I'm selfish like that :-P) inking style?

And here we are! The final colored image! Yeah, you can see some of the scratches from erased pencil lines since I was working on a tiny sketch pad with "lesser" quality paper weight. (Tip: when buying a sketchbook, never go with a paper weight lower than 65 lbs.) For some strange reason, I felt like being faithful-ish to the inking/coloring in the scene from the comic "I Feel Sick" (such an underrated comic and, in my opinion, still my favorite of Jhonen Vasquez's works), particularly the scene in which Devi appears like this; the flashback in the goth club with Eric (the vampire kid) and Oblivia (the mummy who uses bees!). Well, it shows more specifically with the black highlights (if you can call them that) in the hair.


I'm pretty pleased with how this little drawing and inking exercise turned out. I sure hope to god I've improved since my first crack at this image!