Practice

So, a few months ago I was watching a friends house for 'em. During that time I did various things on their fancy entertainment systems and wound up doing a LOT of drawing. Mostly rough stuff, practicing poses and hands and such. One practice, I think I was practicing with measurements, I drew a lovely Ms. Katherine "Kitty" Pryde, aka Shadowcat.

Here's her pencils.

 I honestly have no idea what I was practicing. Could have just been anatomy, could have just been that I've wanted to draw Pryde for a while and haven't found a reason.

Well, recently I got a new scanner that's capable of scanning at 300 DPI (recently being yesterday) because the day before I learned the relevance of being able to do that and just how old my other scanner was. So I threw it in and inked it in photoshop with my tablet. I'm not sure if 300 DPI made a difference on the inking process, but I found it much easier.

Here are the inks.

 And, from there, the natural move forward was to flat colours. There was really nothing special here, I just like flipping between flats and finished versions.

 This is where things start getting interesting. You see, most of my work since I tried doing anything other than the basic shading below I haven't been too happy with. Below, where the lines are obvious and it looks very cartoony, I'm good with that. I like that. Cartoony fits with my style. I'm not a fan of artists who try so hard for realism in comics on a monthly basis simply because the closer you get to realism the more mistakes are noticeable. When it's cartoony you register with what looks human and put a personality behind it. It's basically half-assing your way to a good piece. Or, alternatively, it's not overreaching and getting the same, if not better, results.

So here's cartoony.

 That went one without a hitch. It's simple and easy. I knew it would be simple and easy, and I knew I'd like what I saw. There's just no tricks behind it. But I needed to test my colouring skills, like I've been doing for the past couple dozen pictures, so I did below. And, honestly, I think I'm getting good.

There's the finished Kitty Pryde. At the end of the day I learned me a few tricks I probably should have known before (being that I've used them before) and I got a glorious picture of the best damn teacher in the Marvel universe, along with finishing the most "practiced" picture I've ever done. Now I'm going to do one final practice, the actual printing one, and see how it comes out.

Kitty Pryde was the youngest X-man, forever and a day ago. She proved herself in the field and to Xavier (a story I've had the privilege of stumbling over recently), and over the years she's become one of the most dependable and entertaining X-man on the team. She's a hacker capable of hacking into Stark Enterprise, she was a protege under Wolverine becoming one of the most badass characters in the Marvel universe, she's been all over the worlds (plural) and learned more than I'm capable of by the time she was fifteen. Okay, thirteen, but that's more on me than anything.  Right now she's a teacher for the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning (The Xavier school got blown up enough times that they renamed it and Wolverine took over, which is also one of the most consistently entertaining books on sale), and I couldn't be happier that Jason Aaron is in control of her. I haven't read nearly enough of Kitty Pryde, early or current years, and I can't wait for more.