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JeffGraham-Art — Coipel Weapon X - inks
Published: 2013-05-14 14:50:02 +0000 UTC; Views: 4440; Favourites: 70; Downloads: 66
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Original pencils done by Olivier Coipel. Loved his Avengers stuff, then House of M, & then Thor...the art was fantastic!!Pencils: Olivier Coipel
Inks:
Cheers,
J
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Comments: 11
This is really beautiful. Wolverine is so easy to go overboard with, and I think your inking really pulled out something sublime here.
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On the up side - Nice composition and technical execution! Full range of tone with varied texture. Love it. Did you ink the pencils literally or interpret them?
On the down side - I don't know what's going on with that far-side leg. There is a deep shade that looks like the valley of the sartorius muscle, then a flash of white that looks like background, as if the black marked an underturn. It can only be light on the thigh; it doesn't look right -m the form is not catching light as it should. (It's the pencils, of course, but you're the troubleshooter, hehe. So, make this mook look good.)
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Thank you. I inked the pencils literally; I try to stay as close as possible to the actual pencils; I interpreted a little with the cross-hatching that fades out the background, but again, stayed pretty close to Olivier's original.
I couldn't agree more; I was sort of lost on what to do with that part of the leg. I'm thinking now, in hindsight of course, that perhaps I should have added some lines/hatching/cross-hatching/shadows of some sort etc. to give a better gradation from the solid black of the shadow high up on the thigh down into the white of the knee/calf area.
I get a little nervous when stepping away from the original pencils, even though it may add to the overall betterment of the composition/piece etc.
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I understand that feeling of trepidation, even though I only inked ONE piece by another person. Still, that was instructive. I realized that pencillers live in another world from inkers. They haven't a clue about what the real problems are of B/W composition or of how to solve them. Until the first drop of ink hits the paper, there is no way for ANYONE to know for sure if the pencilled piece will work well or crap out. And once that's begun, you have to think on your feet, don't you? Yes. Sometimes changing things radically!
You have so much power in your hands. Don't be afraid to use it. (For good, of course, never evil 
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Again, I tend to agree; there are some pencillers out there that don't see the work/piece past their own respective contribution. I guess you could say the same about inkers as well; I certainly don't look past what I do in order to guess what a colorist may do. Thinking on your feet is definitely something you need to do, and something I really think I need to pay more attention to.
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Well, it used to be the inkers who pulled the piece out of the crapper when the penciler miscalculated. Today it's the colorist who does it when the inks aren't working. So it seems everyone just does his small piece with the understanding that the last guy in line will make the final adjustments. It works to a point, but since the inks won't stand on their own, they won't fetch much at auction. Also, since the inkers eye and judgement isn't critical anymore, their brains tend to atrophy, like those of the pencilers - they get dumb with respect to principles of composition.
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Agreed...I find some subtle things in my own work that I choose not to actually follow through & fix up, simply because a colorist may pick up that very piece & do the work for me...artists, as good as they are getting, seem to be getting lazier..?
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That is exactly what Richard Pace explained to me when I critiqued one of his pieces. He'd done the contrasts of a human pyramid and left the rest open for the colorist to do the grades. The final piece was great. The inks however didn't stand alone. In this case, it wasn't an issue for him; it was expedient to do it, so he did. Took me to school. Hehe.
As far as artists getting good - the pencilers are getting more detailed and putting in more effort to learn anatomy and such. Some time around Turner they started drawing every hair on a blond girl's head, which is pretty impressive. But they're not artists, per se. They're pencilers, or inkers, or some other limited specialist. They're losing the ability to do it all because they're not studying comprehensively; they no longer think for themselves. There's no incentive for it and, on the other side, it would be unhealthy, financially, to do so. As a result, the quality of art instruction at trade schools is pretty bad - it's on par with the industry.
It's more important to grasp the principles and struggle with technique than have it the other way around. For so many, however, it's the execution that counts and principles are either left to others or abandoned altogether. People obsess over how to draw an eye in an eentsy-weentsy space on a panel, yet put no thought into the black design of that panel or an entire page.
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Putting thought into the black design of a panel/page is the exact kind of stuff that Sean Murphy preaches; you can find several videos on youtube of Murphy doing "an art clinic" @ whatever art university it is, but in each, he usually mentions the black to white ratio of a page/panel/piece. He has the percentages @ 70:30 in favor of one or the other; this gives the page the ability to create great contrast. Adding to that, the idea/principles/elements of design with relation to eye movement, and you've got a great base to work with.
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What's important is that a definite difference is noticed with respect to an active and passive side - the dominance of one side over the other. The principle is subordination, which applies to composition in other ways as, for example, asymmetry of shapes. Hogarth and Bridgman make a point of drawing attention to the various ways asymmetry assists flow by creating the rhythmic patterns that join the units of form. But as you see, it goes well beyond that.
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