Brick Blue-Line

I could easily have colored the Brick illustration the way I usually have over the last ten-plus years. I could have scanned him into the computer, opened Photoshop, and gone to town on the piece.

I could have.

But, tonight, I felt like doing something different.

I scanned the Brick illustration into the computer, opened him up in Photoshop but, instead of simply coloring him there, I turned all the black lines into a light blue line and printed him back out into the real world on 2 ply Bristol Board.

This is a similar idea to the way I used to paint before the computer came into my world.  Back in the 90's, while I was painting for Marvel Comics, they would send me giant boards of art. The art was made up of two pieces. One was a black line of the art on clear plastic acetate. Underneath, on the heavy board, was the same art printed in a light non-reproducible blue. I would take the black line acetate off, put it somewhere safe, and paint and airbrush on the board. Once I was done I'd put it all back together and ship it off to Marvel. Usually, if I was lucky, they'd give me more than one day to get the whole thing done.

I don't have my airbrush set up and I honestly don't know if it even works anymore. So, I just pulled out any watercolors and colored pencils I had lying around the studio and started laying color onto the blue line printed piece of Brick.

The plan now is to scan the colored piece back into the computer and marry it to the black line piece and see if everything lines up. It should be an interesting experiment. And, if I have time tonight, I'm going to head on down to Kinko's and print the black line art on a piece of clear acetate to see if I an come up with an original piece to hold in my hands.

It's been a long time sine I've tried something like this but it really has been a nice change from the computer coloring. Now I just have to see if it all works.

I'll show you the results this weekend.

Keep your fingers crossed!