Ninja vs Penguin

Ninja June 13th, 2008

Ah, I know it’s Friday, but I don’t dream that often. Instead of posting a dream this week, I thought I’d offer up this portrait that I just finished inking.

Meet Dan. He’s the owner of the barber shop that I frequent. He’s a very sweet guy, but he acts all tough. He’s also a huge NvP fan—he told me that he painted and decorated a whole room to match our First Kiss print (which is proudly displayed in said room). O.o Wow, thanks, Dan!

When I last visited his shop, he joked that I should paint him some time. Why not?
Here’s a bit of my inking process:

I finished most of the line work, but the wash on Dan’s shirt was uneven and boring. It could use some texture and pattern.

I photocopied the drawing and cut out the shirt portion to create a stencil.

I placed the stencil over the drawing and used nail polish bottles to weigh it down to avoid shifting. Then I dipped an old toothbrush in sumi ink and used my thumb to create small splatter marks. The harder I flicked, the larger the marks.

And here is the drawing after the stencil was removed.

Here’s a detail of the splatter pattern. I varied my flicking to create different sized spots.

Here’s one of the wallpaper patterns I made in Illustrator as a background for Dan’s portrait. For this pattern, I drew a pair of hair cutting scissors, rotated, and repeated them. I didn’t like the way it looked with Dan’s portrait, so I nixed it. I may tweak it later, and give it a go again.

Here’s the final. I evened out the wash of the shirt, then added more shading to Dan’s jaw and neck to give him definition.

Happy inking & happy Friday,
Ninja

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Tags: ink, Patterns, portrait, Process, Wallpaper

• Illustration , Posts by Ninja , Process
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