I don’t draw with ink. All my pages are hand painted with black ink and water but prior to that, all artwork is pencilled. I use a standard A3 sheet of paper (photocopy paper is partially transparent and good when working from photo montaged templates) which fits a standard comic page quite comfortably. For pencils I’ll only use a .35 mechanical pencil, nothing smaller. I have enough trouble trying to not snap my .35 leads when drawing.

After this, the art is flatbed scanned at 600 dpi and then the brightness and contrast (or levels) are adjusted in Photoshop to enhance the contrast and make the pencil lines more defined. Ill then print this sheet on A3 (I use Quill XL MultiBoard 210gsm) and proceed with painting the line work.

Just a quick sample. With most of my panels I’ll use a wide format to enhance the cinematic feel and Ill also introduce a short depth of field. This is achieved in Photoshop  by duplicating the art layer, applying a 2.1 Gaussian Blur to the duplicated layer and then activating a layer mask for that layer. With a layer mask available you can choose which parts of the blurred image will remain while erased areas will expose the clean art beneath.

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting production sneak peeks of Changing Ways Book 2. I’ll be uploading insights into my techniques, studio space, frame samples, story arc hints etc so stay tuned as I’ll upload 1 image per day for the next 25 days.

So lets kick this off with a simple desktop screenshot that shows some technique process for book 2 and a hint at some of my recent research.

- kickass.

Changing Ways behind the scenes desktop

Changing Ways: Book 1 is now available on Graphicly for Android, iPad, iPhone, Web and desktop!

As Changing Ways: Book 2 is nearing completion, Justin Randall unveils the cover art for the continuing saga of the Barrot family.