Okay so last week I shared the plain old black and white line art. And this week I'm back with the color line art!!!

When I first started coloring Monster Guy I wasn't sure how I wanted to tackle it. I certainly don't have anything against color holds, but at the same time, I don't choose to use them that often.

For some reason, I went nuts with the knockouts on this one. I just got really into it. And the process I used for the color holds was a little unconventional for me.

Anyone who knows my working process knows that I have a quirk -- I hate working with my line art layer set to multiply. I prefer to scan in my work as a 1200 DPI bitmap file, and then I separate the blacks from the whites.

And that's what I did for Monster Guy. But in the process of that, I realized that I was left with a white shell:

I decided to create my color holds by working underneath that white layer and using it as a mask. So, for example, if you were to hide that white shell layer, this is what the colors look like:

Because the white mask layer was originally made from a bitmap and it was composed of rigid pixels, I was able to merge the white layer with the colors underneath, and then easily delete away the white, leaving me with the color line art you see at the top of this post. VOILA!!!

Next time, I'll dig deeper into my interior coloring decisions for the penultimate installment of the Monster Guy artistic process!

As I mentioned last weekend, I'm going to be sharing a step-by-step look at the creation process of my Monster Guy illustration. I did a similar behind-the-scenes series of blog posts for last year's Explorers of the Unknown pinup, and you can expect the Monster Guy series to be similar.

I mean, that's not to say the process for this cartoon was exactly the same as my Explorers piece... because there are some decided differences that'll become apparent when I post next weekend. But this first step -- the line art -- isn't going to hold any surprises. SORRY!

Mainly, there's one thing that's unique about Monster Guy's line art: zero mistakes! About 99% of the time, I draw in pen or marker, and that means my original line art typically contains some flaws that I smooth over after I scan. This time around, I didn't have to worry about that because the sketch came out solid on the first try.

Next weekend I'll share my color line art and that's when things'll get interesting 🙂

There's a fundraiser going on tonight for Pittsburgh's Future Tenant art gallery called Sugar Factory. I donated an original 10"x10" piece titled "Hollywood."

This work is a culmination of sorts, taking my recent obsession with stick figures to a visual and thematic climax. If you're interested in my description of this piece that will accompany it at the show, check out this PDF.

The image you see above is a scanned and cleaned up version of the original. While they're almost identical, they're not exactly the same. I flattened the colors for the web because the original was done in marker. Here's a photo of the original. And here's the digital version on deviantART.