Process Video – Rust Belt Arcana

I made a little video documenting the process of one piece from Rust Belt Arcana, a new book by Matt Stansberry and I, out on Belt Publishing in the fall of 2018. Music by Eternities.

Rust Belt Arcana Process Video from David Wilson on Vimeo.

The Awakening – Preview and Process

After sending the final files off for The Awakening, a short comic I made, I figured I would post a bit of the process behind making it. The Awakening is a 16 page, black and white comic about a young boy’s dreams of the dark forest that surrounds his house.

Let’s start with the cover and the small thumbnail sketch.

I scan the thumbnail sketch in and work on it digitally until I get everything how I’d like it to look.

After getting the drawing tightened up and an idea of the type placement, I’ll print out the sketch and draw it in blue pencil and ink it traditionally.

Final inks scanned, color added, and typography placed.

Next, the process of making the interior pages. I start with small thumbnails to layout the story and make sure everything works sequentially over the course of the entire issue.

Next I rough out the thumbnails to a larger size, correct dimensions, proportions, etc. Then I’ll scan in my rough sketches and work on them digitally correcting anything that looks strange or incorrect.

I also start working on values and shadows. After I figure like the compositions and values I print the picture out either black and white or blue line and move onto inking.

Final inks above. After the inking is cleaned up in photoshop I move onto adding color, or in this case black and white values, then the typography.

Here’s a preview of the final issue which will be on sale in February.

Thanks for reading!
David
www.workdavidwork.com

Lovebirds Book 1 Preview and process

Here is the first chapter of LOVEBIRDS Book one “The Long Road” written and illustrated by David Wilson. Below the preview is a collection of process pictures with some notes. If you like what you see LOVEBIRDS is on sale at amazon here.

PROCESS

Character studies in sketchbook. None of these are meant to be perfect in any way. I like to do loose, quick sketches trying to capture the feel or look of a character. These drawings are more idea based than art based. Finding wardrobes, appearance quirks, etc.

Below are a couple process pics of making a cover image, ink splatting and color studies over quick layouts.

Floodplains Process

With the recent launch of www.floodplainsmag.com I figured I would share some of the photos I took during the process of creating the illustrations.

Process

I want to share a piece I painted almost a year ago and never got around to doing anything with. I rarely work in a larger format. Most of my art is done on bristol or watercolor paper no larger than 11×17 (for scanning purposes mostly). I wanted to try something a bit different and purchased a few 2ft x 2ft wood boards to paint on.

Starting with a few pencil sketches and eventually a final sketch I used a projector to trace my original sketch onto the board.

Then the painting begins.

This video…

makes me so angry. Most process videos are inspiring. This is just downright demoralizing… any designer/screen printer needs to watch this.

I Retire

Aaron Horkey and Jay Ryan are 2 of the hardest working men in America. For anyone that has ever silk screened, it’s quite a process. They take it to the extreme. Check out their latest poster here. And scope out a message board filled with progress shots here.

They cut out their EXTREMELY detailed drawing by hand and print instead of printing off acetate out of a normal printer. I feel so lazy.