Fiona Burns

Still watching, still enjoying, and man she is dangerously hot.

Black Dragon dismount

It almost caused me pain to go so bold on some of those lines while in process, but now it seems the right decision. The best thing about the classic inking styles is that you have to rush your way through them. If you are too slow and careful you lose the slash and burn spontaneity which are the hallmarks of the period.

I'll post some of the hand colored prints when I get them finished.

One of the things I admire most about those guys is their strict adherence to story. Every line and brushstroke was meant to embody character, attitude, or drama. For those guys art was the byproduct

Ink and pulp

Both Mark and I agreed that the image should be a pastiche of the classics. Mark was thinking along the lines of Darwin Cooke or Bruce Tim, but I wanted to go farther back. I pulled out some Will Eisner along with Wally Wood and Alex Toth for seasoning. I tried to understand the “why” behind their work and see if I could apply it to my own.

This was an all tools on deck exercise. Some of those oily Eisner style lines absolutely required a brush, but I found it was easier to capture that drawing with ink flavor using the Namiki instead. There was a ton of back-and-forth.

Inky dismount

I wish that someday I will be able to use a brush as well as Karl Story, but until that day comes I will continue to slice pages up with the razor tip of my Namiki. Holbein 354 black flows quite nicely through the pen and lays down a serious black. I tried running Holbein special black through an older Osmiroid fountain pen once and I believe it's still stuck in that pen. That stuff is dangerously black.

It's always fun to play with this hard cut style. It's really all a balancing act between small cut graphics and long sweeping shapes. I want to create spaces that trap the eyes like a maze and combine those with giant expanses of positive and negative space. I feel that one helps to amplify the other.

I liked how the pieces turned out individually, but as a triptych they really flow well. Perhaps the three brothers should meet every decade or so and bring the pieces together. If they do, they should take care not to say their names backwards when the pieces unite. It could awaken something… terrible.

Starting lines

I ink with just about anything I can get my hands on. Different methods and different tools create different looks, and I believe too much rigid loyalty on a specific technique can create stagnation. The Flash covers seem to call for a hard and fast tool, and quill seem to be the way to go. I'm using a fountain pen because it can take more of a heavy-handed beating than most of the dip quills I've used. I get pretty nutty about antique fountain pens, as they are the best due to their craftsmanship and flexibility, but you just don't find those every day. Newer quill pens are just made to mimic ballpoint pens, and the quality generally doesn't hold up. After an extensive search I came across the Namiki Falcon. It's a Japanese pen made in the classic style. It weighs in at about $130, and that's ridiculously expensive compared to the $2.00+- cost of dip nibs. But once you start laying down lines with this thing you completely understand the cost. You can get brush like lines, and it feels more like drawing rather then inking. It is a joy to be holding.


Ask me if you can take it for a spin next time you catch me at a convention.

Speed drawing

I knew I would eventually lift the bees to a separate layer in the coloring stages, but I didn't want to draw them on a separate sheet of paper, so some of them are not in their final position.

I also tried to distort and simplify his anatomy to really give a sense of movement.