‘Deathly’ Artwork by Dirk Hooper
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I have to tell you something. I’ve never had more fun doing artwork in my life.
For the past few years, I’ve been on a journey to do art digitally. My experience with drawing, illustrating and painting goes back to when I was five or six years old. But about three years ago I started doing art on my computer.
This process has been gratifying, but it wasn’t until I found Clip Studio Paint last year that it all started clicking.
I mostly do art for fun and to relax, and it’s been pure pleasure lately.
I had this piece on DC’s Death character ruminating for a while. One of my favorite comics ever is Neil Gaiman’s run on Sandman, and Death is my favorite character.
My version of Death is a little more goth-glam than usual. That’s the thrill of doing your own thing, you can mix it up.
This piece was created about a year ago. I have a new piece that I just finished last night that I’ll be sharing in the next couple of days.
Pencils and Inks
So, I can’t share pencils with you this time, I had to erase that layer.
This is the first time I made a huge mistake in my digital process and it’s been informative. I created a pencil layer where I had everything laid out and then started doing my inks.
When I was about halfway through my coloring process I looked at the piece and realized that I still had my pencil layer “on” and went to turn it off and I lost half my inks!
I had inked the head and part of the torso on the pencil layer. Unfortunately, that led to me having to make the decision to either erase the pencils lines or re-do the inks in some of the toughest areas.
Since I liked the way it was, and it was getting late (very late) and it almost never turns out as good the second time, I did my best to erase the pencil lines.
In meatspace, if I erase pencil lines it’s no big deal, but when you get the inks on the same layer as…
