Hello, Aliens! How are you all doing? It’s been quite a while since I last shared an art post with the community. Well, after nearly two years of drawing on my own—and almost a year since I first started posting here—I’ve decided to share this piece. It’s part of a comic-themed portfolio I’m putting together for 2027, featuring characters from various publishers like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and more. This project also serves as a practical application of my studies in anatomy, shading, inking, and panel layout. It’s also a way for me to study comics and the artists behind them—a practice I consider vital, as it’s one of the things that has contributed most to my progress. That, of course, is in addition to drawing constantly—all day, every single day. For me, personally, a sense of obsession plays a very significant role in this.
This piece is a study based on a reference. I used a depiction of Nightcrawler from X-Calibre issue #1 (1995), illustrated by Ken Lashley. I took only the pose as a reference and created an entirely new composition digitally, while keeping the original dialogue from the comic.
I drew and inked the piece traditionally first; you can see parts of that process:
If you’d like to watch the entire process in a "speed ink" format, you can check it out here:
Once the traditional inking was done, I scanned the work—I use an Epson V750 Pro—at a resolution of 600 dpi. After bringing the piece into the digital realm, I continued the inking process in Clip Studio Paint EX 5.0. I use inking brushes created by comic artist Jimmy Reyes; they’re designed to emulate an organic feel as closely as possible—incredibly useful!
You can view the full inking process here. I also held a few live, real-time sessions on my channel, which you’re welcome to explore if you’re interested! Here the complete proces:
So, once I finished inking it, I used a background template from CP, applied gradients, and created a frame to make it look like the character is entering a room from the street—a very "New York-style" alleyway, I might add. Finally, to achieve that 80s/90s-era texture, I used a free comic-book texture pack from True Grit and layered a vintage paper texture over the top to get the final result.
I want to thank the following Hivers who—ever since I started posting "snaps" of my artwork and art studies—have engaged, commented, shown appreciation, and supported the process. I truly value this; it makes a huge difference. Infinite thanks to:
@wiseagent @curamax @kachy2022 @letusbuyhive @bhattg
I’m currently working on a new Absolute Batman piece. I started yesterday, and once it’s finished, I’ll share it with you all. Here’s a little teaser:
Best regards.
