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The Hunter – Character Design – From Sketches to Final Ink – Part 2

Hunter-Pencils — The Hunter by Ralph Contreras

The Hunter – Character Design – From Sketches to Final Ink – Part 2

While looking through some of my drawings from ten years ago I found a character design I did for “The Hunter”. From that original sketch, I redesigned his look and biography. The newer design sketches were a little rough, but they were intentionally quick to get my thoughts down on paper.

Once I had the look for The Hunter down, then I could start having fun. I decided to draw him in an action pose, jumping at a target with his gun and sword ready for battle. I tried playing with shadows, perspective, and highlights. I’ve been refining these elements in my drawings. They have been helpful in me finding my own comic book art style.

Hunter-Blue-Pencils — The Hunter Blue Pencils by Ralph Contreras

Now that I’ve got an awesome action pose drawing I was ready to ink it. I’ve been digitally inking my pencils for the past year. For this drawing, I wanted to go old school and ink with real ink, but I didn’t want to lose my original pencils. So I scanned the drawing and turned the pencil lines blue in Adobe Photoshop (being the crafty graphic designer I am). I then printed the pencils on card stock paper and was ready to ink traditionally.

Right on! My next post will show the cool inking of this Pin-up. So keep an eye out.
-Shazam!

This blog post was originally published on my former website, Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Artist Blog.

Vader’s Fist – The 501st Legion – Pencil Drawing

The 501st Legion – Pencil Drawing

Here it is….my drawing of Vader’s Fist, the 501st Legion. I started drawing this picture a few weeks ago. I took a week off from drawing it and finished it this weekend. I had a lot of fun with this drawing. I usually draw comic book stuff, but I felt like changing it up. I’ve never really drawn a Stormtrooper from Star Wars before, so I decided to draw a bunch. I choose the 501 because they aren’t just any legion of Stormtroopers. They are the Elite in the Empire and Darth Vader’s personal legion and later Grand Admiral Thrawn’s too. Check out this article at Wookipedia to learn more about them.

This pencil drawing was done on 11″x17″ Bristol board paper. Comic book art paper to be exact. I used an HB woodless pencil to sketch it out, then used an HB mechanical pencil to darken the lines I liked. I used little Xs to show where the solid black area would be. When I finished with the darkening of the final lines, I used a 4B woodless pencil to fill in the black areas. To see the beginning stages of this drawing check out my blog post ” Star Wars – Vader’s Fist – Beginning Drawing“

I’m planning on digitally inking this pencil drawing in illustrator. I like inking digitally with Illustrator because vector images are always perfect no matter how you resize them. I haven’t decided if I’m going to color it in Photoshop or in Illustrator though.

This blog post was originally published on my former website, Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Artist Blog.

Thor Pencil Drawing

Thor Pencil Drawing

Here’s a pencil drawing I did of Thor the God of Thunder from Marvel Comics. It’s his new costume he’s been wearing since his return to his own monthly title. Which by the way is a very excellent read.

This drawing started off as me just sketching while watching a movie, but became more detailed as I got into the drawing. I totally lost interest in the movie. I have recently been drawing mainly with an H6 Staedtler wood pencil, but for this drawing, I decided to try a different lead. I actually used a much softer pencil, an HB woodless Ebony.

I tried not to sharpen the pencil or use an eraser much. I started off with a very light sketch and build on top of it adding details and shadows. The lines on this drawing are much thicker than I usually do. Using a softer lead was a challenge for me, but I really like the results. I’m excited to digitally ink this in Illustrator. I will make sure to post the inked version when I’m done.

This blog post was originally published on my former website, Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Artist Blog.

Comic Book Digital Inking with Adobe Illustrator

Fantastic Four digitally inked by Ralph Contreras

Comic Book Digital Inking with Adobe Illustrator

Here is a digitally inked Pinup of an awesome penciled piece of the Fantastic Four by artist Ariel Padilla. I found the pencils on his DeviantArt page and I knew I had to ink it. I used Adobe Illustrator so I could create a vector image. This way it can be reduced or enlarged with no pixelation of the image. This is actually my second piece digitally inked but the first I’ve done in Illustrator. My Batman 2.0 character redesign was my first digitally inked piece but for that I used Photoshop. I have used Illustrator in the past to create illustrations, logos, advertisements, and marketing but this was the first time I incorporated my graphic design skills into inking.

I have a Wacom tablet but for this digital inking, I used only my mouse and the pen tool. So basically the piece is all straight vector anchor points. This illustration took about 5 hours, which is longer than I thought it would, but it was fun and a nice practice piece. On my next Illustrator ink, I plan on using the Wacom tablet and the brush tool. Right now it is all about having fun and learning to use the tools I use in my graphic design work in my comic book artwork. My next step will be to create flats for these inks and maybe color them too.

Original Pencils of Fantastic Four by Ariel Padilla

Here are the original pencils by Ariel Padilla.

Want to see the steps I took to create the digital inking? Check out my blog post: Comic Book Digital Inking Techniques with Illustrator Vector Anchor Points

This blog post was originally published on my former website, Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Artist Blog.