jimmygrist.net

New secret about the process: I scanned some different colored washes into the computer (that’s the term for a big puddle of watercolors). I’ve been inserting them as backgrounds in Photoshop by deleting the blank space behind the characters and just sliding in a color. I don’t like taking too many shortcuts, but this is one that (a) is easier for me to pull off, not having to paint around speech bubbles and character contours and try to keep the tone uniform, and (b) looks better in the end. Using this strip as an example, the big background in panel 1 is unique — I really painted that onto the page, starting with yellow, then adding dabs of orange, and painting the green hills on top of that once everything had dried. The backgrounds in panels 2 and 3 are just my purple and blue wash, slipped in on a layer behind the characters and their speech.