This is a drawing that I did a few years ago. It was an exercise to try to rejuvenate the drawing drive that I used to have. 

From the eight grade until college, my aspiration was to be a comic book illustrator. When I went to college, I studied Graphic Design because I thought that would be a good fall back in case Illustration didn’t work out. Somewhere along the line, I discovered the precision that exists in computer design.  Now I could get everything exact right down to the pixel.  Pencil or ink drawing is much more organic and by the time college wrapped up, I found this frustrating.  

So I turned my focus to computer design and shelved illustration. But every now and then, the drawing bug bites me.  In my last few sketch books, most drawings are unfinished. This drawing was an attempt draw something, anything, and finish it.  It is a recreation of an Alex Ross painting but drawn in Frank Miller’s shadow-only Sin City style.  

This drawing was originally done in pencil on 11″ x 17″ Blue Line Pro comic book board. I then inked it using a few different sized Sharpies. This particular paper doesn’t absorb ink well. The ink bleeds out. Knowing this helped determine how I was going to finish this drawing. It needed to be filled with big areas of black. This paper doesn’t allow for thin lines (at least not as long as I was using the tools that I was using.)

It has been a few years since I drew this, but I still think that it holds up. There are definitely areas that could use improvements. There aren’t too many drawings that I’ve done that I still like after I’ve worked on it. This one has less mistakes than others that I’ve done.