Another Art Project Goes “Splat”

I got a set of nib pens for Christmas in hopes of finally figuring out how to do “proper” inking. Historically, I’ve used fine-tipped markers and tried to recreate the effects of nibs and brushstrokes through “fakery.”

Since the object was to concentrate on technique and self-instruction, I didn’t spend a lot of time coming up with an original pencil image to start from. Instead, I “swiped” an image of Jack Kirby’s Captain America and another of Sheldon Moldoff’s Batman. Trying to copy their styles was another sort-of test for me, though I’ve done something similar before with an image where Kirby’s Silver Surfer met Al Plastino’s Superman. I’ve always been struck by the huge gulf between Marvel comics art styles of the early to mid-60s (generally energetic and innovative) as compared to DC’s output from the same period (fairly bland and still stuck in the previous decade). I like the idea of these characters running into each other back when they were most different from each other. Sort of a “changing of the guard” thing.

Anyway the brush work went a lot more smoothly than I expected, but it took a lot of trial and error to figure out the nibs. I used Speedball’s “Cartooning Project Set” and leaned heavily on the “B6” nib for wider lines and the “100” nib for the finer stuff. I couldn’t work up the courage to try the wider ones.

About 3/4ths of the way through, I had a temporary bout of insanity and changed nibs over the board (!) which resulted in some splatter. I considered (a) using white-out to cover it or (b) tossing the whole thing in the wastebin, but then I decided it might be fun to add more splatter, on purpose. So I traced the figures to make an overlay mask, dipped a toothbrush in the ink and ran my finger over the bristles. I couldn’t figure out why the results were so uniform — lots of tiny dots of almost the exact same size, creating a “static” or “fog” effect — so I tried going over areas again to make some parts darker, but that didn’t help much. Eventually I realized what I needed was more variety in the size of the droplets, so I switched to smacking the toothbrush against a pencil. The end result is a lot “busier” than I wanted, but at least now I know better how to control splatter.

I finished it off with watercolors, which was fun as the ink was waterproof and didn’t run. With some practice, I think I could do some interesting projects with these methods.