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Blastaar

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    The Artist’s Process

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    I was able to get some feedback on types of blue line and the process itself from the great Sean Parsons! He was open to me sharing his process so here it is. ( I will add that he does have pages currently for sale and can be reached via Facebook :) ) 

     

    When I asked why sometimes it is clearly visible that ink was over a blue line and other time it was difficult to tell he gave the below response. 

    Per Sean

    Some of it is the shade of blue people use. I've got original inks of mine over blueline that I won't even try to sell because I picked a color of blue that was too bright and I didn't do enough clean-up of the art before I printed it out. Sometimes a penciler either draws with a crazy light and you have to darken the scan to see the pencils, or they draw super dark and with a soft lead that leaves smudges all over the page. if you don't take that into photoshop or some other program and clean it up, stuff you don't even notice on a scan will ruin a printout. In some terms that might not make sense to a non artist, if you smudge pencil lead by rubbing your hand across a page of pencils which happens constantly as a penciler works, it might leave a light gray smudge on a white background. Say its barely noticable, like 5% gray on white. Barely a shade darker than white. Super light gray now. If you turn that page into blue, and print it out, what was super light gray on white, is now blue. There is no way to not notice that on paper now.

    a lot depends on the blue shade you use too. Some blues are light but well visible, but work better on a dark penciled page than a light penciled page. Light pencils read better on a page if they are more of a light mint green shade. Sometimes we will print the pencils out in gray color instead of blue as well. it blends better with the ink and is less obvious than blue printed pencils, but takes more cleanup work when you scan the inks to send to the colorist. I use gray occasionally, because 20 years of inking with my face inches from the page has ruined my eye sight, but I also don't like the gray printed pencils because I think some inkers use gray to sort of trick people into thinking the art is over original pencils. If you see a pinch of gray sticking out, its easy to believe its pencil lead, and if the page isn't stated to be inks on blueline, buyers can be fooled. That's why I try to be sure a buyer knows if he's buying bluelines or original pencils and inks from me.

    another factor is paying attention. In photoshop, there is a box that opens that shows you the difference between a color you choose, and what it will look like on screen and another box that shows what that color looks like in print. Those two boxes never look the same. It almost always prints darker. so a nice light blue might look perfect in photoshop, but prints 3 shades darker. most inkers say "oh well" and start inking. I've made that very mistake plenty of times, but paper and printer ink aren't cheap and some guys don't want to go back and spend ten more minutes changing it around and reprinting it again

    a page that looks this color  in photoshop...

    119023398_1506558592872071_934137535471021542_n.thumb.jpg.1bb18b073e686ff59fed3493ece84035.jpg

    might print this dark when you print the page out...

    119005265_1282363268762049_2304470488429719493_n.thumb.jpg.8560d0048d8e5a508e396e57e3608f8e.jpg

     

    this dark blue page is a great example of what I was saying about smudged pencil lead ruining a printed page too. It looks fine as you see it here to my eye. But, looking at a close up of the gutter of the page, that is the part of the page between the panels, you can see that what is supposed to be white has smudged lead on it, and it became a blue smudge when the page was turned into blueline. No one took the time to clean it up. When I clean up a small section, clearing up that smudge, you can see how white it should have been. Now imagine holding that inked page in hand, and how awful that blue everywhere must have made that page.

    119180443_797713207722875_1841331502186832931_n.jpg.13076373cd8eee47fa1b30c336dc29c8.jpg

    it should have been cleaned up, and it could have been cleaned up and the blue removed enough to not ruin the original art, but at the same time, cleaning it up also makes it harder to make out certain details. So you have to be a good inker not to ruin the art once some of the pencilers details become harder to read

    119042339_686413568632657_1981117878187309861_n.jpg.7101e4a5460bfcafc6d9bc4d5c45b3d1.jpg

     

    I have saved a bunch of preset shades of blue that I choose from with each new job. Some shades work better on certain papers, some work better with certain pencilers. it all depends on if the penciler draws light or dark. I have a lot more colors than these, but most of them are based on some version of one of these colors, but this is a good reference point to start

     

    119057900_1034926953633811_8825500069091039342_n.thumb.jpg.4c55c9682a0eb544eebadc9d4dcf312d.jpg

    blue lines and their value

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    I just paid $500 of a splash that was inked over blue line scans. It killed me but the splash was fantastic. Will the market for blue line increase...is there value in collecting them if the pencils exist? I bought this recently and if there are pencils only out there I assume it is full of x's and not near as great as this page...so this would be the preferred page of the two that exist I imagine?

    s-l1600.thumb.jpg.31ab74bcfa765ad88c442dad1eb41723.jpg

    Old art? New art? What you read (present), read (past), or simply like?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    44 minutes ago, BCarter27 said:

    What did you get? I've been waiting to find a decent large tablet for this that's the same size as an actual comic. Then, I might consider going digital.

    I went the cheap route as I didn’t want to  spend the money for an IPad which would be ideal, but not if that’s all your using it for. I bought an RCA Tablet (10.1" 1080p full HD display, 32 GB) $150. Works great. And comixoligy has the ability to automatically zoom on each panel as you flip through for us older folk. 

    Is there a market for these?

    in Original Comic Art

    Posted

    3 hours ago, ESeffinga said:

    Looks like a printed book plate to me, based on the printed text at the bottom.

    That said, printing screens didn't get really good until after the year 2000 or so. I can't see a dot screen, but it's a small pic. I'd have to see a super closeup to confirm it's original. But that printed text at the bottom is very weird.

    Anyhow, parts of it look like pencil and parts look like ink wash.  As for value... whatever you can get someone to pay you for them, as with anything else. Absent knowing where they were used and how, they are simply unattributed drawings.
    This is were the old monetary value is almost always tied to something. Be it the artist's name, the book the work was done for, the reach that the image has had, etc. and so on. Without having any of that...

    To someone into landed gentry style hunting, steeplechase, horses, even maybe hunting dogs, they might have some value. I've seen framed stuff like this in antique stores sit for $100-300 for years and years. It's all about getting eyes on it and letting the market set itself.
    If you can find the source of publication, if any (family, asking around groups for which this type of material might be familiar), maybe you get lucky and it's from something people have heard of? Or you find out what it is, and discover it's from some book no one even cares about any more, and your parents just fancied the drawings. Might have more value as keepsake than art find, really.

    If you ever get to go to a really large market in a very large old city (London, Paris, Rome) you can often find such drawings by the dozens or hundreds. Random scenes of life, etc. As an art subject it didn't really take off until the late 1800s/early 1900s, as before that, most art and drawings were made for the rich, and they didn't fancy seeing average people in their homes. Hah. My suspicion is that this was to illustrate a story or something.  Could have been done as late as the 70s, but possibly before.

    If you know 100% for sure it is really original art, and not printed, you should directly ask Mitch at Graphic Collectibles, as he's sold a fair amount of illustration art over the years. You could hit up any folks that specialize in selling illustration art to see if they recognize the style, or the style that this drawing might be aping. And you could reach out to David Apatow via his Illustration Art blog, and see if he has any thoughts. he's written several books on illustrators, and pays attention to a lot of it. He might be gracious enough to give you his .02¢. http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/ 

    There are also Illustration Art groups on Facebook. You could post them there and ask if anyone has any thoughts on where to look.


    At the end of the day, my recommendation is to not get your hopes up, be methodical. Take your time. Figure out what you do and or don't have.
    But ONLY if it's worth your time and you have a genuine curiosity. Otherwise, chances are it is a big waste of time and not worth the hours of work you'll put into it to find out it's gonna net you $45 on eBay. people talk all the time about barn finds. Attic finds, etc. Hitting the mother lode as it were. But that only works best if you know what you have. Knowledge is almost 9/10s of value in a case like this.

    Good luck.

     

     

     Thank you for the thoughtful answer.