A Faint Pencilling

You will probably need to click on this to make it big. It is the initial pencilling for the page I posted earlier with the thumbnails.

Holy grammatical gaffe, Batman! Comics makes verbs out of nouns... like "pencilling!"


Yes, pencilling. We have to call it that because, well, see, we have to because there are four stages of drawing in comics!

The first is the layout; seeing how the page flows, where to put the focal points so that the eye can swim across the pages with the greatest of ease.

Then comes the ungrammatical "pencilling," where we sketch out the actual things that go on the page.

Lastly is inking, where we digitally or physically finalize those pencilled lines to give shape to the final artwork.

Coloring isn't necessarily a part of the drawing, but black really pops with even one color, really making the art stand out. I personally prefer black and white art, simply because I can see the artwork really clearly. But grayscales, tones and filters are also a part of coloring and a part of the artwork. And if you really want to press it, you're coloring it with black... so there!

Of course this is all tradition. Some of the best artwork I've seen is painted or done in ball-point pen. You can use photos (fumetti!) or the third dimension with boxes and braille and textures. You can have everything on the internet or hand make every one! Really, comics is too much fun to be latched on to one way of doing things. Just do what makes you happy and share it with everyone and their mother and their dog.