New Tumblr and New Techniques

I've been crazy neglectful of my Deviantart page, but I'm glad that people still come around here to check out my work.  While working on Magdalena, it was really hard to post, because I was working mostly on pages that I couldn't show and I don't finish sketches enough to feel that they are worth sharing.  I'll be posting a lot more now, and you might notice that I'm posting a lot more color work.

Coloring has always been a lot of fun for me, but it was kind of a hassle when I worked at TopCow offices(I still work for TopCow but I'm in NYC right now.)  I had to scan, clean things up, then work with the Wacom and there just wasn't enough time to mess around with it.  Messing around is a lot of fun, and it's how I get a feel for something like coloring or a new style.  The only thing is, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and the very act of cleaning up linework to post online takes me an hour.  When I was in California, I didn't even scan 99% of the work I was doing.  

Enter: the Cintiq.  I'm working mostly digitally now.  At first this was just for efficiency and adding some techniques, like the ability to color sketches in one hour instead of say, three.  After getting my hands on it, I've decided to use it for pretty much everything.  I'll still do covers, splash pages and commissions by hand, but at least for awhile, most of what you see here will be digital work unless I'm posting something older.  It may be different for everyone, but transitioning to the Cintiq was pretty seamless and easy for me.  Being able to flip the work to view errors or replace an entire part of the drawing without destroying paper with an eraser makes drawing much less stressful for me.  

Mark Silvestri once said, "Doing comic book pages is like taking an SAT test, every day for 14 hours a day."  Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, until now.  Now doing pages feels like sketching at a convention or a coffee shop, and I love that.  It also allows me to ink my own stuff.  I LOVE Sal Regla's inks, and Sal is a great guy on top of that.  If I'm in a situation where I need an inker, he's my first choice.  As it is though, I like the feel I'm able to get when inking my own work.  It's less about the line and more about movement, shape and design.  

Since I'm doing digital work, I'm more cognizant of the ease of viewing things on a phone or a tablet, so there is a new tumblr for that: nelsonblakeii.tumblr.com

The deviantart page will updated even more regularly from now on, since it's so easy to turn my sketches into something more finished.  The tumblr is more for social media stuff, and because DA isn't so great on some devices.  So far, everything on the tumblr is 100% digital.  Until I master the tool, that'll be my focus for a bit and most original art will be commissions.  

As usual, thanks for taking the time to look at my stuff.  I appreciate the support and I'm glad to be back around these parts.  I forgot how great the DA community is.  

-NB2

Twitter: twitter.com/nelsonblake2
Tumblr: nelsonblakeii.tumblr.com
Comics: Magdalena is all up on comixology comixology.com
or you can go to the Top Cow store topcow.com