Behold the Power of Masking Fluid!

The last few days saw me engaged in the most frightening thing I've ever done to a comic page--dousing it with black. (Yes--It even trumps the page I sloshed with beer.)




However, I say unto thee, behold! The power of masking fluid!


(Characters are under there...somewhere.)


And the masking fluid is removed!

Behold! (And auroras in progress.)

Pages 39 & 45

Here's a few more pages from Across Thin Ice! Bit by bit, the comic is coming together. I'm happy to do be done with a couple of scenes which were getting (more than) a little tedious to paint. It gets remarkably boring to mix the same colors day in and day out. :P

I'm also almost finished with the "Bar Scene," which will also be a nice weight off my shoulders.



Pages 39 & 45:





Ambient Blue


I use a piece of blue matte board below the maquette heads to emulate the ambient blue reflection coming off the ice.


Lastly, a little bit of inking...



We escaped up into the mountains for a respite from the late summer's heat, but work still follows wherever we go.
I brought a bunch of sketched pages, already soaked, stretched and stapled to boards, ready to be inked. That seemed to be the most portable of all the comics many "in between" steps.




You really couldn't ask for a better studio. :]

Pages in Progress 2

It's been another busy week, painting, painting, painting.


The Masking Process:

After I've stretched and inked a page, I apply masking fluid (sometimes called 'frisket') to the speech bubbles and lines between panels (where tape won't do.)

I use Winsor&Newton Colorless Masking Fluid. I paint it on with an old junky brush, since it's guaranteed to destroy a nice one.

It's very important that your paper be dry before you apply the masking fluid, and also, that the fluid be completely dry before you begin painting. When you're done with your painting, you just peel off the mask to reveal the clean white paper below.






Like I said, it's been a busy week. I think I'm juggling eight pages currently stretched, inked and in various stages of completion. The task for today is to finish all the little details I've been putting off, calling it the super-human feat of eight pages finished in a single day, then drinking a nice bottle of wine to celebrate (rather than drinking cheap wine to survive.)

Here's a couple I'm working on from this last week, in no particular order: