Tag: Thor

Comic Page Inking! Thor vs. Taskmaster

Inking-Thor-vs-Taskmaster
Thor & Taskmaster ink drawing by Ralph Contreras

Comic Page Inking – Thor vs. Taskmaster

I’ve recently started to enjoy inking with pen and ink. In the past, I’ve focused on inking digitally using either Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. But I decided to tackle inking in the physical world. I have found inking with pen and bush to be more satisfying to me personally. I still believe that digital inking is a great technique. But for the time being, I will try to sharpen my skills in more traditional ways. My tools of choice have been a 102 nib pen and a size 4 sable brush.

I’ve been inking my own work, and that has been a great experience.  I’ve decided to try inking other comic artists’ work too. My hope is that this will help me learn new creative approaches to comic art. I looked all over for a penciled piece I’d like to ink, then I found this super awesome piece of Thor vs. Taskmaster by comic book artist Mahmud Asrar. It comes from Avengers: The Initiative #32 Page 4. I found this on Mahmud’s DeviantArt page. I had fun inking these pencils. I will definitely be inking more comic pages in the future. – Shazam!

This blog post was originally published on my other website Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Ralph’s Art Blog.

Sketch Card – Thor of the Avengers

Thor
Thor drawing by Ralph Contreras

I’ve decided to do a quick pencil drawing every few days. What better way than to draw on a Sketch Card? It gives me the opportunity to practice drawing different characters, and it’s also fun! Sketch cards are the size of collectible cards. They’ve become very popular in the past few years.

For this sketch card, I decided to continue with the Heroic Age theme and draw another Avenger. So I penciled a quick sketch of Thor. It’s cool because the Thor movie is being filmed here in Santa Fe. I even tried out to be an extra in the film. No callback, but it was still fun. This drawing took me about 18 minutes. I used an HB .05 mechanical pencil. I had fun with this sketch card. More sketches to come…Shazam!

This blog post was originally published on my other website Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Ralph’s Art Blog.

Thor Digitally Inked in Adobe Illustrator

Thor digital inking by Ralph Contreras

Thor Digitally Inked in Adobe Illustrator

Here are my digital inks of Thor, the God of Thunder. He’s one of  Marvel Comics’ main characters. A founding member of the Avengers and actually in the very first comic book I ever read. This is the new costume he’s wearing in his new monthly title.

This was a pencil drawing of Thor I did last week. It was a quick drawing using an HB woodless Ebony pencil.  I traditionally use an H6 pencil for light-tight penciling. For this, I actually was able to achieve good detail with the softer lead. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone and try different drawing tools.

I inked this drawing digitally using Adobe Illustrator. I didn’t do it in one sitting. I took my time and did it in small spurts during the week. (Usually watching a Netflix movie on the side). I’ve only just recently started inking my drawings on the computer, which is ironic because being a Graphic Designer for over 10 years you’d think I would have done it years ago.

I like using Adobe Illustrator for inking, I know a lot of people use photoshop which is a great software too. The reason I use illustrator is that I like saving my inks as a vector images. Vector images are great because there are no worries about pixelation. They are always super high resolution even if it’s reduced or enlarged.

For this inking, I only used the pen tool with my mouse or Wacom tablet. It helps to give me the look I want to achieve. I like the sharp edges and thick to-thin lines I get with it. There’s an amount of control I feel I have with the pen tool. I think in my next digital inking I will use only the bush tool. Like I said earlier it’s always good to try different tools. I plan on coloring these inks in the near future using Photoshop.

This blog post was originally published on my other website Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Ralph’s Art Blog.

Thor Pencil Drawing

Thor drawing by Ralph Contreras

Thor Pencil Drawing

Here’s a pencil drawing I did of Thor the God of Thunder from Marvel Comics. It’s his new costume he’s been wearing since his return to his own monthly title.  Which by the way is a very excellent read.

This drawing started off as me just sketching while watching a movie, but became more detailed as I got into the drawing. I totally lost interest in the movie. I have recently been drawing mainly with an H6 Staedtler wood pencil, but for this drawing, I decided to try a different lead. I actually used a much softer pencil, an HB woodless Ebony.

I tried not to sharpen the pencil or use an eraser much. I started off with a very light sketch and build on top of it adding details and shadows. The lines on this drawing are much thicker than I usually do. Using a softer lead was a challenge for me, but I really like the results. I’m excited to digitally ink this in Illustrator. I will make sure to post the inked version when I’m done.

This blog post was originally published on my other website Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Ralph’s Art Blog.