I’ve enjoyed this comic, but I especially love this page. The text over the soldiers’ faces in panel 6 is a great touch, and I really like the watercolor in the last panel.
Out of curiosity, what kind of paper did you use for this? I’d like to try using watercolors on a comic I’m working on, but it seems like drawing on watercolor paper would be a bit of an ordeal.
Thanks so much, Allie! I was really struggling with finding the space for that one narration box, but got super excited when I realized it would add to the tone of monotony and anonymity to have it pasted over like a censorship bar. Glad it worked for you too 🙂
I ink my comics on Strathmore 400 series Smooth Bristol and paint the watercolors on the 400 series cold press 140lb watercolor paper. Of course, you might notice, that’s two different pages, so I’ve been working on the watercolors over the inks on a lightbox. This is fun in some ways, but an absolute pain in the butt in others. Having the painting backlit really throws off my perception of how the colors are going on and especially how dark the lighter washes are coming out. I generally spend a lot of time taking it on and off the box to make sure I’m not totally screwing it up.
Each time I’ve tried this technique I’ve messed with methods for being able to draw on Bristol and then transfer my lines to watercolor without worrying about printer ink bleeding when it gets wet. The winning method (at least in my head — I’ll tell you how it works out when I try it for the next project) is: ink on Bristol, scan and clean-up inks, change all lineart to some innocuous, light shade at 40% opacity or so (I was going to go with a brown or tan, since that was the predominant color scheme and if I’d done cyan, which is what I usually do for inking b/w comics, it might have bled color into the image), then print onto watercolor paper and have at it! Hopefully, when you scan the two and layer them in PS, the faint guidelines will be hidden behind the actual black lineart.
Phew. That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know! I’ll keep you posted on how it works out for my next piece.
Hmm, that sounds like it might work–maybe just a really light grey? It might muddy things up a bit, but shouldn’t change the hue much. I’ve got to try this!
Another thing that might work is transferring the inks to the watercolor paper on the lightbox using a Copic marker in something like a 40% grey. Then you won’t have to worry about bleeding, but you’d essentially be doing the inking twice. If the bleeding isn’t too noticeable with the printer, it’s probably best to stick with that.
I’ve enjoyed this comic, but I especially love this page. The text over the soldiers’ faces in panel 6 is a great touch, and I really like the watercolor in the last panel.
Out of curiosity, what kind of paper did you use for this? I’d like to try using watercolors on a comic I’m working on, but it seems like drawing on watercolor paper would be a bit of an ordeal.
Thanks so much, Allie! I was really struggling with finding the space for that one narration box, but got super excited when I realized it would add to the tone of monotony and anonymity to have it pasted over like a censorship bar. Glad it worked for you too 🙂
I ink my comics on Strathmore 400 series Smooth Bristol and paint the watercolors on the 400 series cold press 140lb watercolor paper. Of course, you might notice, that’s two different pages, so I’ve been working on the watercolors over the inks on a lightbox. This is fun in some ways, but an absolute pain in the butt in others. Having the painting backlit really throws off my perception of how the colors are going on and especially how dark the lighter washes are coming out. I generally spend a lot of time taking it on and off the box to make sure I’m not totally screwing it up.
Each time I’ve tried this technique I’ve messed with methods for being able to draw on Bristol and then transfer my lines to watercolor without worrying about printer ink bleeding when it gets wet. The winning method (at least in my head — I’ll tell you how it works out when I try it for the next project) is: ink on Bristol, scan and clean-up inks, change all lineart to some innocuous, light shade at 40% opacity or so (I was going to go with a brown or tan, since that was the predominant color scheme and if I’d done cyan, which is what I usually do for inking b/w comics, it might have bled color into the image), then print onto watercolor paper and have at it! Hopefully, when you scan the two and layer them in PS, the faint guidelines will be hidden behind the actual black lineart.
Phew. That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know! I’ll keep you posted on how it works out for my next piece.
Thanks for stopping by!
L
Hmm, that sounds like it might work–maybe just a really light grey? It might muddy things up a bit, but shouldn’t change the hue much. I’ve got to try this!
Another thing that might work is transferring the inks to the watercolor paper on the lightbox using a Copic marker in something like a 40% grey. Then you won’t have to worry about bleeding, but you’d essentially be doing the inking twice. If the bleeding isn’t too noticeable with the printer, it’s probably best to stick with that.