"Where do you think the big players get their nukes and Xenonite and death rays and laser grade Diamandium? At a black auction"

This will end up being a double page spread, I'll set the pages up with the text on the Gun Page tomorrow . . .

OK, I got back from WonderCon. It’s a good show, medium-sized, I'd say space & volume somewhere between Boston and Orlando. The focus is strongly on comics, and just going on costumes it wasn’t all anime and (thankfully) vey little steampunk. It’s a good show. You can move around, people are in a good mood, much more manageable than San Diego.

Fear not, in the comic's DNA is the whole watercolor/analog technique, but for this little bit when Rook is breaking down the plan, I pictured it rolling out like a Steven Soderbergh montage, kind of slick and glossy, very Ocean's 11.

The link image is an outtake, I decided after I inked and painted the first third of the page that I kind of liked the pencil roughs better. The Agent's apartment is meant to look chaotic and unkempt and I kind of wanted the pages to match that texturally with the art.

The bead curtain, did you ever see the Luc Besson movie 'the Professional' (called 'Leon' out of the states or by film snobs)? It was Natalie Portman's first movie? Well anyway, there's this great scene where Gary Oldman's hand snakes though this bead curtain and I wanted to capture some of that eloquence, which is hard to do in a single panel, versus a motion picture.

If you would like to view a version with just the art & no text, click on the red "comic" tab above in the top navigation and it will take you to the Gun page. There you'll find all previous 6 pages and if you click the link for PAGE 7 the gallery that pops has options for art only or text of you're following along. Check back in tomorrow for page 8.

This was a test for a new watercolor paper. I usually work on cold press, that's the kind of rough textured paper I think most people are familiar with. Unfortunately the roughness of the paper is, as you can imagine, difficult to ink on. Hot press paper is made the same way as regular watercolor paper, but pressed, giving it a smooth, vellum-like surface, great for inking, however the absorption and bleed is a whole different ballgame when it comes to painting. I'll be honest, I hate hot press, I don't like how watercolor looks on it and the process of painting is more technically rigorous.(check out the pink in her tights for where it can go wrong)

But, as I said, I've been really bummed out by my results inking on rough, so I thought I'd do a test. I may have said here before, between pencilling, inking and painting, inking is by far my weakest game (some things to watch out for, there's not a lot of width variance in my linework and I always feel like I'm losing something essential in the pencils that isn't getting captured in the inks, and I can be a little wooden). this one came out OK though, the black & white of it looked pretty solid.

painting on it wasnt a nightmare, i think you can see that keeping the wall behind her consistent proved problematic and unfortuantely mauves and purples just don't react well with the paper. But overall, it wasn't as bad as I remembered. I liken it to playing the piano and playing the harpsichord, where rough is piano and hot pressed is the harpsichord. The same instrument basically (piano wires are struck, the harpsichord plucked) with a slightly different sound and wildly different technique.

If you click the link in the gallery page there's a nice sketch I liked from when I was working out the trench.

Anyway, Happy Halloween and if any cosplayers out there want to make that trenchcoat, I have a friend  who'd be interested ;)