Wyvern - Ditching screentones for ink wash + process notes

If you've seen my post for Page 1, I mentioned that I decided to stop using screentones in favour of a digital ink wash method for toning the comic. I went back and tested this on a page from the prologue and was immediately won over. I feel like i'm able to pull so much more life and drama out of the art for a fraction of the effort, honestly! I will miss the look of screentones but it's a lot of hassle for something that displays so poorly on screens.

Inspo began with Yas's Gundam Origin manga, which is inked entirely with a brush, and Yas often uses subtle ink wash to soften out blacks in backgrounds. His watercolour pages also go without saying...

Takahashi Tsutomu is another manga artist with a highly gestural style who uses traditional ink wash that's scanned and converted to screentones. There's a Manben episode about him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-dSowCzAbU

Another thing these artists have in common is they both work solo and are both extremely efficient workers, with minimal sketching and fast, fluid inking. As much as I'm influenced by manga, I have to remind myself that many works are produced with teams of assistants... something I don't have!! So in these early days I'm focusing a lot on efficiency - learning what I don't have to draw, essentially. What gets hidden in shadow, what disappears in bright light, what can be suggested in as few strokes as possible. It's letting the viewer fill in the gaps and do some of the heavy lifting for you. I've also been reading Dai Dark by Q Hayashida, the queen of drawing loose and expressive manga, which I'd recommend if you enjoyed Dorohedoro.

Studying painting and doing lots of traditional ink sketches has also been really helpful in improving my comic art. It feels good to be able to bring your whole skillset to the drawing board. Hopefully you'll be able to see some of this in future pages :)

Thanks for looking!