I felt after the Watchmen I had hit on a way of colouring that suited me, so it was

very much in light of what I had learnt on Watchmen that I came to the Killing
Joke. I was going for mood more than any naturalistic colour sensibilities, In
comic strips comparisons, film making process is more often cited than any other
form of image making, so the use of particular colour hues you can see in the
movies that are dictated by a light source was always an approach I had taken since
well before the Watchmen with any colour strip work.

The major difference was it was a type of full colour process called Blue line
colouring, as opposed to the very limited colouring process we had on the original
run of the Watchmen which was hand separation�s making the overlays for the cmyk
colour printing plates.

This type of colouring gave a great opportunity to use different processes to

making colour, so it was airbrush or paint brush washes and coloured pencil in
places, which gives the opportunity to add texture to surfaces.

I have been asked what my favourite panel is and it is the panel were the Joker
appears at Barbara Gordons door holding a gun, this for me is the perfect �before
image� as from here on in the DC universe the Joker grew into the mature catergory
of villain, never to be a �cartoon� villain every again. I had not seen such a
chilling depiction of violence in the Bat universe up to that point, but as in so
much that Alan Moore gave to comic storytelling, from that point on it is a
reassessment of what makes the strongest presentation of �comic violence� and its
question of being appropriate for what particular story you are trying to tell.

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Andrew. I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner. I don't check my blog very often. Sounds
as if you were having a very quiet Christmas day.

I use the pencil tool as opposed to the brush tool because the pencil tool is not
"anti-aliased". (Ghastly expression!) It means that every pixel that I draw is
black. To make a black brush-drawn line look smooth some of the outer pixels are
various shades of grey. With the pencil tool, if I draw a freehand circle I can
select the paint bucket and fill the enclosed shape with black. If I did the same
with the brush there would be an untidy ring of grey pixels between the brush line
and the filled-in area.

I have Manga Studio. I tried it once or twice. I hear it's very good. I've tried a
number of applications - like Google Sketch-up. My problem is I can't be bothered
to learn how to use these things. And having used them I can't remember how I used
them the first time. Photoshop may be imperfect but my fingers fly over the keys
the way my foot hits the brake and the gas pedal in my car, without thinking about
it.

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Bolland is well known for his striking black and white comic art style. Since 1975,
he used traditional inking method with the Windsor & Newton brushes. It was not
until in 1996 when he was introduced to Adobe Photoshop and Wacom Tablet by Dave
Gibbons. Described as an "infectious" moment, Bolland bought a computer a year
later.

Since he had never used a computer before, the transition from traditional to
digital art was difficult at first but with the help of Gibbons, Angus McKie and
his brother Ian McKie, Bolland was able to adapt to Photoshop with ease. From the
end of 1997 onwards, Bolland was proficient enough to do everything in the computer
- from penciling to inking to coloring. He joked that "collectors of original
comics art have hated me for it ever since!"

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The Art of Comic Book Inking, books 1 and 2 by Gary Martin have sections where pro
inkers all ink the same pencilled pages. Here's some of the brushes they used:
Mark Farmer: Windsor & Newton series 7 numbers 00,0,and 1
Gary Martin: Windsor & Newton number not listed
Joe Rubenstein: Kolinsky Raphael series 8404 and 8408 # 2,3
Karl Story: Kolinsky Raphael 8404 # 2,3
William Stout: Windsor & Newton series 7 #1
Terry Austin: doesn't say, I guess he'll take it to the grave!
Tom Palmer: Isabey 6227Z Kolinsky Sable #4
Steve Rude: Cosmos-Extra #4
Brian Bolland: Windsor & Newton series 16 #3
Rudy Nebres: Windsor & Newton series 7 #2
Kevin Nowlan: Raphael or Windsor & Newton sable #3,4
Jerry Ordway: Grumbacher #4

There were more artists featured and the Windsor & Newton series 7 is heavily
represented. Also, every artist used pens as well for machinery, dead weight lines,
panel borders, ect. The books are full of useful info, recommended!
edquinby is offline

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Another trick, this one comes courtesy of Brian Bolland, is to use a q-tip to fill
in large black areas. It works REALLY well. Try it sometime.

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