Covering up DOOM PATROL #8

Here's a cover I inked over Justiniano's pencils. This is the first time I'm inking Justiniano over Blue Line pencils. Well... not really, now that I think about it. A while back when we were working on another title for DC comics, FedEx lost one of the packages Justiniano sent me. Luckily, he made photocopies of the pencils before sending the package out. So he later sent me photocopies of the lost pages, I went out and bought a large size printer and did of one my first blue line printout. Guess that started the ball rolling on my Blue Line inking. Having to create blue lines under deadline pressure is a good way to start.

Anyway, back to this cover. First, I used rulers and templates to ink everything in with a pen,,. Techinical pens and microns. This page took almost a whole day to do. I started working on this sometime in the morning. Since this page had such a large robotic dog head and a metal men, there was a lot of template work. Justiniano tells me I'm crazy for using templates, I tell him I like his art to look good. This process took a while because finding the right curve or finding the right oval can take a bit. I've been using my templates for a while now that I would know which to use very quickly at a glance. Still, not as fast as going freehand, but more precise with templates.

After all the line work, I pull out a brush to fill in the blacks of the main figures and taper all the lines within them.
At this point, all the blacks are spotted below. Not to mention it's night time already and I had to turn on the drawing table lamp to continue working. It's never good to ink in the dark. After all, ink is already dark and when it's night time, that's double the darkness. Definitely can't see anything without lights. I say this because sometimes I find myself so concentrated on working, that I forget to turn on the lamp. Before I know it, I'm inking in the dark. A simple twist of the lamp nob and *click*, let there be light!
Now, I start inking the holding lines of every object. Or, inking the outlines of ever object. At this stage, I would use a quill nib and/or brush depending on how thin/thick I want a line to be.
After the holding lines, I ink in all the interior lines of every object. This is usually done with a quill nib because I like the interior stuff to be thinner than the outlines. At this point, it's all done. Then I shake up my bottle of white ink and add in some white effects. Finally, I ink in Justiniano's name where he signed it upside down on a rock near the characters left foot. When I was talking to Justiniano, he noticed that there wasn't room for my signature and said I can draw in a rock there to sign my name. Signing my name to my work isn't something that I do often and when I do, I like my name to be as obscure to the pencillers name as possible. Signing it smaller so it doesn't take away from the pencillers spotlight. So I signed it teeny tiny and squeezed it right under Justiniano's name. Well, on top of or below of since both our signatures are upside down.
Below is the the final inks I sent out for production. Nice thing about inking in blue lines is I don't need to erase the page when I[m done. Just finish the inks, let it dry for a few seconds and straight to the scanner it goes.
After the colorist gets a hold of my inks, they'll work their magic and add pretty colors on it which will be used for the cover of DOOM PATROL #8.
I've only worked on the cover and this issue will be out in March. For more info, click here.