Arsenic Lullaby - Trail By Comics entry "Lovecraft" round

This is a wrap around cover for an upcoming book. I have a bunch of progress shots, in case you wanna see. I work pretty much traditionally except the coloring and some jacking around with the thumbnails.
starts with the basic idea of course...

then I figure out the vanishing points and details...refine it.

The refining stage with the vanishing points is the dangerous part. The original sketch always has the most life and energy...then you struggle to keep as much of that as you can while making things correct. Sometimes (often) you are faced with a decision- do I draw it correctly even though it will lose visual energy, or do I keep the energy even though it's drawn wrong ( out of proportion, maybe arms that don't bend like they should, buildings that don't exisit on the same vanishing point as the rest of the scene). I happens a lot and it's aggravating. Usually I fight with the f*cker for hours trying get the wild sketch and the refined work to be equal in visual impact...and end up going back to doing it just about the way it looked in the sketch even though some stuff is technically wrong)

Once that's as settled as I can get it then onto the pencils...from here on out I can pretty much turn my brain off and just draw what I've decide to draw.

and onto inking. All the inks are done with a brush ( windsor newton series 7 no.0 ) A pain the the ass, but it gives it more charm. ( I tell myself this)

I'll usually start inking things that are organic or broken, in this case the dented cars and Cthulhu, since there is room for error there. As opposed to the ridged wall and tight lines needed for the little guys suit, if there is a line that goes a bit stray no one will know and it won't harm anything. A dent is a dent, a curve on a wing is a curve on a wing...it requires precision, but a mistake on those...who's to say it doesn't look better if the dent is bigger than I meant to ink it.

Then I'm onto the line that need to be spot on. Window panes, building edges, door frames, but by this point I've got some wins under my belt and my confidence is up. Inking is mostly all in your head. Most mistakes come from you talking yourself out of thinking you can do it.

By the end you are just doing one line after the next and not even thinking about it. and that's that, pretty much it. Then I color the bastard.

Turned out pretty good