A collaboration project with Nex, an old friend and fellow artist (NexusDX on deviantart (http://nexusdx.deviantart.com).

What we did was alternate between pencilling and inking. One would do a few pages of pencils, then hand the book off to the other to ink the new pencils and then lay down some more pencil, then hand it off for inking, etc.

Pencils on the left, Inks on the right.

The purpose of this was to practice our inking technique by trying to interpret the pencils in the case of vague gestures and augment the pencils in the more refined drawings.

Page 6 began Nex's turn to start each project with pencils and mine to finish them off with inks. He begins with a relatively tight, Frank Miller-esque render of what is probably a hard-boiled private eye.

My inks, on the other hand, were not quite so tight. My hatching (shading) style turns out entirely unstable-- no two areas are shaded in alike. I attribute that to the fact that I am still finding my comfort zone with the inking pens.

However, I do believe that I brought some more definition to the man's face. I like how that section turned out, at least.

Graphite and Rapidograph pens on 9"x12" sketch paper.