Steve Bee

A screenshot from my iPad Pro this morning showing my progress so far on comic #7. Page 13 is now laid out and ready for (quite a lot of) pencilling. I started this issue at Christmas and I’m just about halfway through it at the moment. It’s a lot of work to draw a comic book.

Another one of my hundreds of unused outtakes from the last book…

I used the reflected sky as the flat river surface in the distance.
(At the suggestion of @iesornozines.bsky.social -Thanks.) I think it works well.

Good to be getting back to drawing some of my old familiar characters again.

I think I’m addicted to churning out foliage foregrounds. Is there a special term for that?

The first page of the second part of comic #7 is now taking shape as the posse reach the Chelmer River on their way to Silver End.

If you notice I’ve used the same sky in the whole of the latest book so far. As you say, thematic.

Here’s another one of my skies. I did dozens of them one weekend a few years ago. And now use them all the time. Probably should do some new ones.

Haven’t done, but can see it.

Yes, the brushes are just tools. It’s how you use them that counts. Just like playing jazz on a clarinet. More than just blowing and pressing buttons. But the advantage I have is I’m designing the brushes with exactly the requirements I’m looking for when eventually using them.

Thanks - I did that with my Chalk brush.

Here’s the actual picture. Easier to see when it’s not jumping about…

Here you go. I filmed it in real time. It’s not sped up or anything like that. I had to do it fast though because Bluesky limits video clips to 3 minutes only.
(I think this is just over 2 mins). Normally I’d spend a little more time on this kind of thing.

This now becomes a comic I may or may not draw one day…

Bit of fun with that last one…

A composition constructed in part with the foreground I put together this morning with my new foliage brush. With a few other bits added in.

The First 10 pages of Buffalo Bill Amos Rides Again! Issue #7 They said it couldn't be done, so I did it...better read it while you can...

You can see some of my latest foliage work in real depth here on my free Substack blog. The image quality on Substack is excellent and allows zooming in to appreciate detail.

open.substack.com/pub/stevebee...

I suppose I’d describe them as being deliberately random in that I have control of brush size, colour and depth of layer.
The brushes are one thing. The way you use them (individually or together) quite another.
The brushes are good time-saving tools though.

You’ll probably notice if you look really carefully that there is a part of the brush-head that’s a bit too distinctive (and distracting) - it’s somewhere between ten to and five to on the clock face of the brush. It shows up too much on the art piece. I’ll need to remove it when I edit the brush.

The image quality on this platform doesn’t really do things justice though. It’s very fuzzy close up. In a more precise medium the design has a sharp edge even when blown up. Fascinating really to see how these things can merge and produce endless combinations.

OK so this is something I’m calling foreground foliage (foliage with me, as ever although there’s nothing to stop me doing stones like this).
This was produced solely with two (rotating) brush heads. One the one I developed yesterday and the other, one of my old ones called Tamarisk.

I’m probably giving away some kind of trade secret of mine here or something, but I’d find it hard to explain what I mean with just words. The design here is a brush-head I’ve constructed as a direct result of this week’s Burgos experiments. I’ll show a picture I made with it in a moment.

Using some new techniques here that are accidentally coming from my recent experimentation based on the 1950s work of Carl Burgos. A treasure trove of ideas; rich avenue - thank you @iesornozines.bsky.social

Will probably make this a two-page spread in the latest comic book.

…I’ve spent ages looking at the foreground stones on this cover though. Really looking. I need to find some way to replicate that. It’s wonderful.

Happy to be compared to anything Carl Burgos did - thank you. I get what you mean by the rainclouds here, the line inking is done within pencilled areas. As you say, just as I do with my trees and foliage…