Black and White, and a Little bit of Grey.

I have a degree in Sequential Art, but my first one was in Illustration. I was thrilled to be able to write up a general storyline and draw it out. Came out with two issues of a comic before the college I transferred to took up my time. That comic was completely in black and white, as it was cheaper to print it out that way. In one of my classes, though, we got to dabble with pre-printed tones, patterns, and dots. I fell in love with them, but unfortunately, couldn’t afford to get the sheets, or even find the kind of printer transfers to be able to make using them cheaper. Below is the two pages I used the transfer sheets on.





And then last year, my boss bought the left over transfer sheets display, as well as other tools that are used by Japanese comic artists from one of the paint companies we supply at the shop, during an art show the college here sponcers. The packaging was naturally all in Japanese, but came with an English order catalog, to which I perused to see what they had. Ooooh the patterns and designs and dots and everything to make a black and white comic pop out even more! However, I didn’t buy any of the sheets. I think thus far, the only thing that’s sold out of the hole display were the inking pen nibs and inks. Why the sequential department doesn’t take an interest in our shop? It could be because we don’t supply the Col-Erase brand pencils they use, or the blue line paper that are said to be what the professionals use. I learned from my degree that what you use to draw, ink, and color with doesn’t really matter as long as you make good quality work; though I learned the computer coloring is better only because it’s preset for printers. Coloring outside of the computer is bound to lose its original luster and colors because scanners don’t convert the colors to printers very well.

Anyways, buying the sheets from the display would have cost me more money in comparison to buying a CD of prints and patterns. Yes, I found three different pattern CD’s in the catalog to order. So, while ordering another batch of paint for the spring quarter, I put in an order for those three CD’s. Saved me a lot of money, and now I get to play with over four hundred different patterns with my drawings! Each came with a little booklet that gave you a preview of each design and pattern, and a registration card to fill out that gives you full legal rights to using the patterns. I have yet to fill out these cards I have, as it was completely in Japanese…

…I’ll email them about it later. Anyways! Here are a couple of drawings I did while playing with my new toy, as well as the logo up at the top. Enjoy!