I just recently finished an eight-page short story written by Mario Candelaria for the upcoming anthology Maybe Someday. Here’s a look at one of the pages from start to finish.

First step is the Layouts Phase, where we translate Mario’s (excellently written) script into a comic page. This is initially done as a rough layout to help determine character placement, some facial expressions, letter balloon placement, and panel perspectives. Where Mario’s script dictates the pacing and tone of the story, the art displays the mood and the atmosphere, so that’s all considered during the layout phase. I do this digitally to save on paper, and to make the process easier when it comes to correcting mistakes or making quick edits.

Next is the Pencils Phase, where I take an 11x17 sheet of watercolour paper (DeSerres brand, 140lb) and translate the rough layout sketches into reasonably clean lines that I can ink over. For this page, I actually skipped that phase. I wanted to try something a little different, so I printed these rough layouts onto the 11x17 paper (at a very low opacity) and inked directly over the layouts. It was more of a challenge this way, but I wanted to see how it would affect the finished page if I skipped the pencils. So in this case, I went right into the Inks Phase.

This was all inked with a Winsor & Newton Artists’ Watercolour Sable Pointed Round No.4 brush. They’re cheaper than the popular Series 7 brushes, and just as good. All of the characters are inked with this brush. All of the environments (the book, the train seats, the windows etc.) are all inked with a Uniball Vision waterproof pen. I’ve always liked when the panel borders are a little over-connected at the corners, so I tend to leave the little overlaps instead of square them off perfectly. The last stage for these pages was the Paints Phase.

First, I paint the characters while leaving the backgrounds alone. Since the characters are the focal point of this page (most pages, really), I like to focus on them first, and paint the backgrounds to compliment the characters. A character blending into the background is the last thing you want when colouring, so starting with a strong foundation on character paints can help with that. This practice can be used with any aspect of the page that you want to stand out, and not just characters. For materials, I like both the QOR and Daniel Smith brands.

Once the backgrounds are painted, it’s just about ready for letters. I bring the file into Photoshop and do some level adjustments, then send it off. I mostly need to correct for my printer’s all-too-bright backlight by darkening the inks. Finally, a few additional notes on this page:

I blacked out the windows on the train so that there would be no backgrounds to distract from the characters.

I blacked out the ceiling to focus on the characters heads/upper bodies, when applicable.

In the first panel, the outline of the left character’s hair was re-done digitally after I accidentally inked over it.

In panel 2, I forgot to draw the character’s bag beside him. You can see purple-ish lines where it should have been.

And that’s how this page was made.