NIGHTMARE WORLD week: The Guns of Love Disastrous

My second collaboration with Dirk Manning on NIGHTMARE WORLD marked a real turn artistically for me. I had just started playing with ink washes, but had meager results with how to color them. Actually the results were pretty bad. But I'm stubborn and convinced myself I'd find a way to make it all work.

I'll show off some of my ink work first. I had done 2 previous projects with this technique, but I feel this page is what turned the lights on for me.

one of my favorite pages:

So you can see, I'm fairly comfortable pushing the ink around the page. I remember reading a trade paperback of Jason Aaron's SCALPED at the time. Colorist Giulia Brusco had done a fill in story, coloring beautiful ink washes. Inspired, I played around with some photoshop settings to try to mimic what she had done. I'm not sure if she has a similar process, but I found what I wanted....

Obviously I've modified my process since then, and I'd probably color it different now, but I still look at this project as a key moment in my development as a comic book artist.

Please remember to order a copy of NIGHTMARE WORLD VOL 3 DEMON DAYS  due out next week (October 5th).