Hello, Aliens! How are your pencils and inks coming along? I hope you’re all doing well. In my last post, I shared a work-in-progress update on my latest Absolute Batman piece—following my work on Nightcrawler. Well, it’s finally finished! I’ve completed the entire piece, applying a two-tone finish—using textures from True Grit (which ended up being my favorite choice, the first picture)—alongside a high-contrast, classic black-and-white ink style, executed both digitally and traditionally. To practice, I challenge myself to go through the inking process twice: once traditionally and once digitally. This gives me a broader perspective on applying ink on a larger scale, allowing me to practice the process twice using different methods and tools. By spending a long time studying the original artist’s work as a reference, I find the process to be incredibly immersive and enriching for my own artistic growth. I’m really enjoying Absolute Batman; there are several pieces by the DC artist that I’m quite fond of, and this particular one—a panel from issue #1 (which is excellent, by the way)—captures the moment this version of Batman unleashes his full fury upon the "Party Animals" gang.
So, I used that panel as a reference and got to work. I recorded the entire pencil phase—you can watch that here—and here is the scanned, inked version of Batman.
After that, I scanned the work again, converted the lines to blue, and began the inking process in Clip Studio Paint EX. I used the same settings as before, along with brushes by Jeremy Reyes. I recorded this stage in both real-time and time-lapse; you can view both versions here:
The real-time recording (captured during a live session).
https://youtube.com/live/pa9o0lx66UI?feature=share
Speed INK: The time-lapse recording (generated using Clip Studio Paint’s built-in timelapse feature).
Finally, after completing the entire Batman piece—which took about three days, balancing it alongside my other activities and the time I dedicate to drawing—and carefully reviewing every detail, I found this study to be quite different from my Nightcrawler piece. This is due to the original artist’s approach to inking: there are many areas without ink—not just blank, but truly empty—including tiny points where the paint enters and exits. Capturing all these nuances to ensure the work was done thoroughly proved to be quite a challenge. One takeaway from this study is that these gaps create a textured, painterly, and rustic quality in the inking—which, I believe, suits Batman perfectly—and I plan to incorporate this technique into my future work.
Reference i use:
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the piece and the entire artistic process. Thank you so much for reading.