And we're off!

Here's an interesting story about this page. Well, interesting to me anyway. You may find it totally uninteresting, in which case you should mention it in the comments, or just send me a personal note ruining my day. 

My initial plans for this book were to draw and ink everything by hand, scan it all in, and add the color on the computer. That's how I did the cover, and that's how I do a lot of my illustration work. I even bought a beautiful little device called a Cintiq to help me do this. A Cintiq is basically a 21-inch monitor that is also a graphics tablet, so I can use a stylus to draw directly onto the screen. I recommend it to anyone who in the field who is questing for an enormous tax-deductible expense. 

But I actually decided to finish the page as a watercolor. Why? Well, here's the thing. I had a lousy scanner. When I would scan in a drawing - and I had to scan it in in pieces -  it would distort the damn thing, and the pieces wouldn't line up, so I'd have to spend an hour tinkering in PhotoShop just to get the drawing to look like the drawing. After only three, maybe five, years of complaining about this, I finally bought a really good scanner. It's an Epson Expression 10000XL, and I recommend to anyone who still has any money left over after paying for the Cintiq. And if you do, call me. Maybe we can go out to dinner sometime. 

Back to the point: Now that I could do fast, accurate scans, it occurred to me that I might as well paint the thing by hand and then scan it in. Believe it or not, I find it actually faster to paint by hand. I realize that this admission has just ruined my chances of every becoming a spokesman for Cintiq, but such is life. I like the chaos of a hand-drawn painting. Hope you feel the same. 

Incidentally, the lettering is all being done on the computer. I like it, but if anyone thinks it's too hard to read, this would be a good time to tell me.