I decided to put some of these little works up for sale on my Etsy store (mainly there because I haven’t upgraded my plan or figured out how work around it to sell here).

What exactly are we looking at? Glad you asked. This series started as warmup pieces. When I was inking comic strips or larger works I often feel a bit rusty. My brushwork looked sloppy. In my opinion. So I started doing small drawings to ink as a warmup. This would help fine tune my hand and the brush tip. Get my mojo back.

I always enjoyed drawing animals. In order to motivate myself I picked an animal for each letter of the alphabet (now it’s a series!) to draw in a suit. Preferably a tux. Why a suit? Because I need areas of solid black to get my brush tip whipped into shape. Get the bristles good and saturated with ink. Eventually the brush point begins to feel right and I can get that fine line that was eluding me going in cold. Then I could hit the fine detail work on things like fur and feathers to really sharpen it.

Then I could move on to the larger pieces I wanted to get to.

At some point I decided to scan them and digitally color in Photoshop. I only got a few done. And I think those are great. There is a section on the site here where you can see some of these.

The sizes of the pieces vary. Some are 3″ x 4″ range some are 4″, 6″, some square. I really didn’t plan the sizes when I started them. Which makes some difficult to mat and frame. Hey, it is what it is.

All works are india ink on smooth surface Bristol board. I sell the original art but retain the rights as part of my business model. For later licensing and/or print projects. You get it.

Here is a link to the current listing:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1831189682/framed-original-black-bear-ink-drawing

John !