Bone Dog Single-Panel

Here's the third single-panel from my Ivan Brunetti homework (see my last post). It features my character, Bone Dog (as usual, click to make bigger).

For those of you who don't know, Bone Dog is my comic about a skeleton dog who lives in a dump with his rat friend, Sergio. Garbage eating is involved (just look here).

This comic was drawn with a nib pen. The image needs to be cleaned up; I'm sorry. I didn't get a change to run it through Photoshop. I promised I'd post it today, so here it is, smudges and all.

Bone Dog: Page 5

There are a few significant things about this page. First, it's the first I've done with a dip pen (a.k.a nib pen). It's also the first one I've done on this larger size of Bristol board.

I consider the dip pen a success. They are hard to use, but India ink out of a bottle is so much blacker than using markers or Mircon pens. Plus, if you use a more flexible nib, it's a lot more expressive.

Up until this page, I've been doing comics on 9x12 Bristol board. I really wanted to have more space, so I "upgraded" to 14x17.

It was nice to have all that breathing room. I really felt that it made drawing the details a lot easier, since everything was bigger. The lettering was easier too. Great success all around.

Then, I scanned it.

The first problem is that my scanner is 10x14 (or thereabouts), so I had to scan this sheet in four pieces and put it together in Photoshop. I didn't mind the extra work so much, but my 6-year-old Mac did. The file on this thing was huge. I think I actually heard my computer wheezing when I tried to do any kind of manipulation. I can't tell you how many times I had to restart my computer while working on this one page.

Anyway, if you see stray pen marks or mistakes on this page, I'm sorry. I just couldn't torture my poor ol' Mac anymore.

On the upside, the India ink scanned great!