I was doing some pointless experimenting with paper textures in Photoshop when I realized, hey, maybe I ought to do some actual drawing practice. My art class is on hiatus, so I’d been slacking/devolving. A few hours later, and here’s a sloppy Dorothy Lamour!

The Paper software I mentioned yesterday got me thinking about how a brush-like, variable-width line might help my comic strip seem a little less flat. Sounds like I’m letting the computer dictate my style, but presumably this is about how I’d ink with a real brush. What do you think?

Okay, I’m not quite as grumpy as this guy, but holy crap, am I beat for some reason.

I drew this in a new iPad app called Paper, which may be one of the first drawing apps to approach the ease of sketching on paper. There’s no zooming allowed, but the translation between your brain and finger remains surprisingly intact–but as you can see, it also adds its own style to your scribbles.

I did some digital inking over my red-pencil model sheet. Unfortunately I was in a rush to get to the pesky day job, so I’ll probably end up re-doing most of this. Gotta remember to stay loose when inking!