Haven’t been posting art for a while because I’m fully concentrating on my comic project, learning and so on.
However, studying the work of many great artists, recently Jack Kirby, I thought I’d design a Kirby brush. I loaded up a raw Kirby image and tried to duplicate his ink strokes, and never got around to creating a brush but just continued inking over the art work. It’s not what I consider my work, just an exercise, and just using existing brushes I got close to the original.
Doing the exercise gave me some understanding of what this Kirby brush needs to be, so I’ll get on to it, I want to have just one or two brushes that can do everything. I’ve found Krita a great tool box for comic production and hope this becomes better known.
and the question is … Why? Why do you need a ‘special’ Kirby Brush? Is there something missing from the thousands of existing brushes? I always ask myself this when I see new brushes posted (or any new thing really?? how many types of cars, dishwashers, floor mops do we actually need? Do the existing ones not work?) and as I continue to navigate and learn to use the existing brushes… Dunno…Curious…or maybe I’m just a jaded ol’ curmudgeon.
I understand, but as I do my comics I come to realize that none of the brushes perform like a real ink brush, on some strokes yes, but others no, and it is my hope to produce some brushes that work closer to the flexibility of the real brushes (it may be impossible). I’ve also been using Clip Studio Paint and the same problem is there.
It’s not that I want more brushes, I really want less, but I have to make them. I already have quite a few that I’ve made, but all have limitations, and I could live with it and learn to work with them, but having used ink on paper in the past, I hope to be able to emulate that sort of flexibility, so my aim is to create a small number of simple brushes, but with so many controls, it is a constant experiment to design these. If I achieve this I will probably release yet another bundle of Krita brushes to clutter up your brush menu.
Great inks.
I’ m also doing a comic-book all in Krita, 18 pages. I’m pretty satisfied with the actual brushes. But when your Kirby brush will be ready, I’ll give it a try for sure !
Keep us informed !
Just a thought here.
I had read this in an interview ( probably in Modern masters/Back issue series) between some old masters.
They actually supported the approach of sketchy and loose drawings by the pencillers .
Because they felt this can help an inker to become more creative and imaginative,rather than only following/obeying very tightly defined lines .
So personally I feel your sketchy and not too tight drawing approach can also become an advantage !
Ha ha, you should see my sketchy pencils. But I actually agree with that sentiment when the penciller and inker are both at a good level of skill, it’s a case of the penciler having enough confidence in the inker to give them some scope to bring something to the final image. Since doing these exercises I just went and penciled two pages to a much higher degree than normal, there’s still room for re-definition with the inks, but I think my days of inking over loose sketchy pencils are over. I do my first sketch on paper and scan them in, these are usually loose almost doodles, sometimes tight, whatever, but now I do pencil-over in Krita and make them fairly tight because I just want to be able to ink them with speed and not a lot of problem solving. I’m learning a lot in my two week break from work, changing my ways and trying new approaches. I wish I could quit work and concentrate on comics but it’s not possible so I have to just push on bit by bit.
Kirby was amazing. Romita too. Buscema even more. I love the art of both, the art done during the golden and silver ages. And it’s so nice to see artists following their path. Such drawings remind me of my childhood and the comics I had read back in the day.
and nice brush study!