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Digital Pencils / Physical Inks - Thoughts?
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48 posts in this topic

Where on your list do you place digital pencils and physical inks by the same artist (the case Malvin referred to)?

 

andy

 

Good point. I missed that. Here's how I'd rank them:

 

I think my revised order would be (most expensive to least expensive):

  • Pencils, letters, inks (100%)
  • Pencils & inks (90%)
  • Digital pencils and physical ink by same artist[90%]
  • Pencils only (60%)
    Because the penciler told the story though the inker wins on details
  • Digital pencils & inks by different artist (40%)
    Ahead of blue-lines because pencils don't exist
  • Blue-line inks (40%)
    The published image
  • Digital one-of-a kind prints (not much from me, but maybe something)

 

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Okay, so I'm curious: Does anyone here know of an artist who went from pen and ink to digital pencils/physical inks or pencils only, and now charges less for their work because of the transition?

 

Scott, thanks for the info on pencil "fade".

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Okay, so I'm curious: Does anyone here know of an artist who went from pen and ink to digital pencils/physical inks or pencils only, and now charges less for their work because of the transition?

 

I didn't see anyone cut prices when lettering went away either.

 

My list is simply a way to express the inexpressible. It assumes the same image in the same case by the same artist (or art team). That simply doesn't happen.

 

The partitioning between pencil only and blue line inks seems to be pretty standard if you can find both. For the rest, it represents my opinion on relative value to me. Others may agree or not.

 

 

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A professional inker friend who works for DC sells his artwork, and people always ask him if it's digital pencils, blueline pencils and/or original pencils.

 

He has a mixture of everything in his portfolios for sale. He retorts, what do you think? and can you tell the difference? To which nobody can.

 

If noone can tell the difference, will your inker friend say what pieces are what ? After a while, maybe even he can't tell or remember.

 

Now, suppose someone can't tell the difference and buys a piece from your inker friend. And maybe the inked piece changes hands a couple times. Later on, a separate piece with the "original" pencils appears. What should the owner of the inked piece be thinking?

 

Who knows, the "original" may be falsely labelled as a prelim. Or alternate version, there are a good number of postings doubting whether art is unpublished or alternate versions of published pieces or just fakes. Unfortunately, there's no way to catalog every piece of paper that passes through an artists hands. Or document an artist's process to tell what they did on any credited work.

 

It's not a matter of the "scarlet letter". It should be about knowing what you are buying and whether or not you think it is worth the asking price.

 

- if you've ever seen the original pencils vs the finished inked work on certain pieces, or if you notice you mainly like a certain artist when inked by one artist vs another (Kirby pencils w/ Sinnott or Stone VS Coletta or Royer inks) - -

 

For certain pieces, I think some people might prefer Kirby's pencils vs inked bluelines of Kirby's pencils.

 

 

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Just read through this short thread and and as a new collector find this to be a very interesting topic. Also, I just passed on a pricey (for me) cover by a modern artist when it was explained to me it was composed digitally and then inked, by the artist, over his printout. Instinctively I found it less compelling (hard to explain why). Just curious if any of you more experienced collectors have found "recreations" (likely of covers/pin-ups) more common due to the increasing use of digital pencils?

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4 hours ago, Noob19 said:

 it was composed digitally and then inked, by the artist, over his printout.

If this was the final inked version for publication, I'd be OK with it. But if he re-inked after publication as a recreation, I'd pass as I don't collect commissions for the most part. Some collectors do and that's completely OK, but valuation needs to be adjusted accordingly.

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5 hours ago, Noob19 said:

Just read through this short thread and and as a new collector find this to be a very interesting topic. Also, I just passed on a pricey (for me) cover by a modern artist when it was explained to me it was composed digitally and then inked, by the artist, over his printout. Instinctively I found it less compelling (hard to explain why). Just curious if any of you more experienced collectors have found "recreations" (likely of covers/pin-ups) more common due to the increasing use of digital pencils?

You like what you like and more power to you, but I don't really understand this thought process.  It's the same artist hands that make the piece beginning to end. It's the pure vision of the artist and the final layer of the drawing in ink is non digitally hand done, and I'm sure a lot of the finalized drawing is done at this stage too, again by hand.  Full disclosure, this is how I work too (although I also do some analog pencilling between digital layouts and analog inks), so I have a vested interest.  That said, doing the rough drawing digitally enables me to do far better drawings and compositions than otherwise, and in the end there is a much better piece of art as a result, largely hand drawn and inked.  Seems like a win win to me.

As far as reuse/recreating something just because it's digital, that's not something I do or would ever do, but could frankly do it if desired with all any non digital piece of art with a light box, so it seems like a moot point.

Edited by stinkininkin
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4 minutes ago, stinkininkin said:

It's the same artist hands that make the piece beginning to end. It's the pure vision of the artist and the final layer of the drawing in ink is non digitally hand done, and I'm sure a lot of the finalized drawing is done at this stage too, again by hand.

Yeah, this is how I feel. I have a few pieces like this, and the digital pencils don't really bother me at all. In every case though, it's the same artist doing inks over their own digital pencils. I think I'd feel differently if it were someone inking over another artist's digital pencils. Not really sure why though.

Mike

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On 1/30/2017 at 8:05 AM, AKA Rick said:

... also artists who assume the inker roles like Scott Williams, Joe Weems, Alex Gardner, Matt Banning, Richard Friend, Terry Austin, Jay Leistein, Norm Rapmund, Giordano, Murphy Anderson, Wally Wood, etc - - if you've ever seen the original pencils vs the finished inked work on certain pieces, or if you notice you mainly like a certain artist when inked by one artist vs another (Kirby pencils w/ Sinnott or Stone VS Coletta or Royer inks) - - you can truly appreciate the artistic contributions of inkers, who are often credited as "embellishers" - - and that describes the craft more accurately in that the role of inker doesn't simply of course trace over pencil lines making them darker, the inker takes what exists and improves it, adding their own contributions, altering the artwork with their final touches, often including intricate details as well as backgrounds and scene support.

 

So, in that way, I hate to see the scarlet letter applied to inkers works disparaging their valued efforts and contribution while praising pencilers as the be all end all, at times.

The inking that McFarlane did over Greg Capullo's Spawn pencils comes to mind when I read your post.

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I only really care about the number of copies of the art that exist and whether the art was the version used for publication (i.e.; not a recreation or print). Art can be made in a multitude of mediums. As long as the art is truly one-of-one, I'm not going to judge one piece less because the tools were different. I'm not a fan of digital prints even if they claim to be "one-of-one" since they can be reproduced relatively easily. Even so, I think "one-of-one" digital prints are going to be acceptable to more and more collectors as artists shift to digital. At some point, traditionally produced art will be to the future what twice-up art is to us now.

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10 hours ago, stinkininkin said:

You like what you like and more power to you, but I don't really understand this thought process.  It's the same artist hands that make the piece beginning to end. It's the pure vision of the artist and the final layer of the drawing in ink is non digitally hand done, and I'm sure a lot of the finalized drawing is done at this stage too, again by hand.  Full disclosure, this is how I work too (although I also do some analog pencilling between digital layouts and analog inks), so I have a vested interest.  That said, doing the rough drawing digitally enables me to do far better drawings and compositions than otherwise, and in the end there is a much better piece of art as a result, largely hand drawn and inked.  Seems like a win win to me.

As far as reuse/recreating something just because it's digital, that's not something I do or would ever do, but could frankly do it if desired with all any non digital piece of art with a light box, so it seems like a moot point.

Actually, you've just justified a higher price for inks over original pencils: it's harder to get it right.

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I think some people are overvaluing an interim step over the final published art. I bought the following 2 boards of the same comic page from the penciler's art dealer and the inker's art dealer. Tell me what you think I paid for each. The total of the combine the 2 pieces is $240.

Butch Guice Pencils

dGVELzYQ_1109141341591.jpg

Brian Theis' inks over Blue Line.

ZoLioX07_1209141626101.jpg

 

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On 2/2/2020 at 11:31 PM, Noob19 said:

Wild. I swear in late 2018 I passed on a HB cover for $5k...(Thought it was just too much.)

 

On 2/28/2020 at 3:39 PM, cmaeditor said:

Tell me what you think I paid for each. The total of the combine the 2 pieces is $240.

 

 

Butch Guice Pencils - $100

Brian Theis' inks over Blue Line.- $140

 

Because for these pages, I think the inks display so much better than the pencils.

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On 3/2/2020 at 11:59 AM, Catwoman_Fan said:

 

Butch Guice Pencils - $100

Brian Theis' inks over Blue Line.- $140

 

Because for these pages, I think the inks display so much better than the pencils.


I actually paid $65 for the pencils and $175 for the inks. If you were to go by the formulas people have posted Butches pencils should have been $144 and Brian's inks $96.

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On 3/3/2020 at 7:54 PM, cmaeditor said:


I actually paid $65 for the pencils and $175 for the inks. If you were to go by the formulas people have posted Butches pencils should have been $144 and Brian's inks $96.

Interesting.  

Are the pencils and Inks both on full 11x17 size boards? 

 

Did you consider just getting the inks, and skipping the pencils, just curious.

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6 hours ago, Catwoman_Fan said:

Interesting.  

Are the pencils and Inks both on full 11x17 size boards? 

 

Did you consider just getting the inks, and skipping the pencils, just curious.

Both the pencils and inks over blueline are on 11x17 boards. I originally bought the pencils from Butch's Dealer along with another pencils page. A few months later and I came axross the inks for one of the 2 pages and bought it. I'm still looking for the inks to the other page. I would prefer to have both inks and pencils. There are other aert teams that sell them together as a set. Most of my art is inks over pencils on the same board. I have some that are inks over digital pencils as well, usually the digital pencils are by the same artist.

I kind of like that some teams are preserving the pencil art this way, as you can see how much the inker can bring to the page. I once had the idea to take a pencils only piece and get 3 or 4 inkers with different styles to ink the same bluelines and see what they do with it along the lines of the inkers challenge that the Inkwell Awards has sponsored.

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