Inking Owen

Thanks to Shane Glines' Cartoon Retro website, my hard drive is full of classic comic book pages, especially ones drawn by Owen Fitzgerald. I used to try to draw them off of my computer screen to study them, but it was a little awkward. So recently I had an idea to round up all of Owen's art that had been sitting idle in my computer and make a book out of it. The result:



One big tome full of Moronica, Winnie the Wac, The Slap Happys, Starlet O'Hara, Liz and other swell art from The King of Cute Cartoon Girls. The book is 223 pages, and is spiral bound so that it stays open easier while I'm trying to draw out of it. I only printed one copy for myself because all of the content came from Shane's terrific website, which you should go to right now and become a member.

Another benefit of having these cartoons in "hard copy" is that if you want to learn the ins and outs of inking, you don't have to draw the figures first with a pencil and then go over them with a brush. If you are impatient like me, you can put a sheet of tracing paper over the art itself and then go from there. If you make a mistake, no need to sketch them again and start over ... just get another sheet of tracing paper. That's what happened with the "ink sample" below. I made a whole other page of practices out of the book, but this is the only one worth posting. I inked the girl first, but afterwards I got overconfident. I shouldn't have drawn the background -- oy!