Hey folks,

Wow! Been almost two years, huh? My how time flies!

To be honest I planned on posting the first entry of my triumphant return to blogging back on April 1st so that it would coincide with the one year anniversary of my switching to doing freelance art full-time, but not surprisingly deadlines kinda got in the way. Add in the fact that at the best of times I'm pretty god awful at taking the time to type something out and well, let's just say that I'm kinda shocked that this is coming out only a couple weeks late.

Now what I had originally planned to do was a write up about how things have changed for me over the past year as well as letting you know both what I'm currently working on, and what projects I've got coming up in the near future.  Sadly though, that would take far too much time then I have right now.  So instead I decided to start a bit simpler and just post a few of my favorite pages from Gutters that I've done in the past year.  Then maybe next time if I still haven't gotten around to writing up a more in-depth description of what I've been up to, I'll share some of my favorite pages from Terminals, or Evil Inc or something else I've had the pleasure of working on lately.

For now though...on to the Gutters!

The page below by Ryan Lee is still to this day one of the only bits of work I've done where I feel like I couldn't have done any better on it even if I had a chance to do it all over again. As well, it's one of the rare times where I actually I got to paint something rather then just "colour" it, if that makes any sense.

Also, while I can't speak for other colorists, I know for myself at least that painting someone's pencils is a much tougher process then colouring inked lineart, but when you get the right artist to work off of, I'll be damned if I can think of any other type of work that is more rewarding.

Linework by : Ryan Lee

Click on the pic above to see the full sized image

The linework with this next page was done by the amazing, Guy Allen. One of the only downsides of Gutters is that since the artwork is provided by an ever changing group of artists, and the turn around time for me to finish a page can be insanely short, it can be extremely hard at times for me to figure out how best to colour certain peoples work on the fly like that. In fact when I start a new project I prefer to take a very long time with the first page or two just to get the feel of what works and what doesn't, but for Gutters that's just not an option.

With Guy however, even though I haven't done an exact tally, I'm pretty sure he's responsible for more Gutters pages then any other artist to date. Which means that with him I've already had the rare opportunity to learn from my past mistakes. So with this page not only was I allowed to draw on the previous experiences I had working with Guy's art, but also with my past efforts on Evil Inc a well where I tried to give certain strips a sort of aged look.

Linework by : Guy Allen

Click the pic above to see the full sized image

I'm really not a fan of the Hulk. Never have been. But sweet jeezus do I love this page! Kevin Stokes is such an awesome artist whose work is almost impossible for a colorist to screw up. With some artists I feel like I really have to stretch or adapt to get the colours to look or work right, but with Kevin I feel like the style I've personally grown most comfortable doing is the exact right fit for his art.

Granted I have no idea how Kevin feels about how I colour his work, so for all I know he took one look at this and said "Wow, did that dude ever fuck up my page!", but personally I'm quite happy with it.

Linework by : Kevin Stokes

Click the pic above to see the full sized image

Okay, I actually have about three other pages I wanted to show, but since I am the world's slowest writer this has taken me far too long as it is, and I really need to get back to work. Still, I'll try to get part 2 of this entry up over the weekend (or at the very least in less then a year and a half from now).

Later,

Ed

Hey folks!

So here are two more portfolio pages for y'all to see.

First up we have a Gen 13 page which I picked because I've never coloured anything even remotely mangaesque before, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Why was a Gen 13 book was done in this style, you ask?  Well truth be told I don't really follow the book so I haven't a clue actually (though I am fairly certain it's not normally done like this..right?).  However this was taken from an annual instead of a the regular series, so maybe it was sort of a "What if?" one shot type of thing.

Pencils by Kaare Andrews

Inks by Mark Irwin

Colours by me

Click the pic above to see the full sized image

Next up we've got a Green Lantern page that oddly enough doesn't have a single member of the GLC on it (though it does have Alan Scott, so at least that's something). Can't really remember why I specifically picked this page, but I'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that it allowed me to colour Superboy Prime, Cyborg Superman, and Sups himself all on one page. Sadly, no Krypto though, but no page can perfect I guess.

I should also point out that I spent way too much time tweaking this page once it was done. Don't get me wrong, I think it's always good to take another pass at something that just doesn't look perfect to you, but there comes a point for me where if I obsess about a page for too long I lose all sense of perspective and begin to second guess everything I've done. That's where I'm at right now. So in the end I figured the best thing for me to do at this is just post it, move on, and then look at it again in a couple weeks with fresh eyes.

Pencils by Ivan Reis

Inks by Júlio Ferreira

Colours by the man sitting here wearing nothing but a smile and a wacom tablet

Click the pic above to see the full sized image

Alrighty folks, that's it for me.  Have yourselves a wonderful weekend and I'll see y'all when I have more to show you.

Later,

-Ed