Out From Boneville

Being a pretty big fan of Jeff Smith's Bone, I figured I might as well get the obligatory piece of fan art out of the way. I walked away pretty happy with this one so I though I'd throw in a little behind the scenes look at my process for those so inclined to take a look.


All the original sketches are done separately on just plain copier paper then scanned in at 300 dpi into Photoshop. I then take what I need from each of those scanned files (three pages for this one so three scans) and lay them out in one master file on separate layers.


I take the laid out file and drop it into Illustrator for digital inks. Unfortunately, for now I'm stuck working with just a optic mouse (no tablet - come on tax refund check!) so Illustrator's superior Pen Tool and ease of editing individuals line widths is what works best for me for the time being.

With inks done, I head back to Photoshop and prep all my flat colors (no gradient/effects). The trick I've found that works well with my art is this slick little setting for the Magic Wand tool called "Use All Layers" which allows me to select the space on the line art layer I want to color without leaving the separate layer I set up for the flats. Add this with Select / Modify / Expand and you can save a ton of time on this otherwise tedious task.



Once the flats are set, I rig a new layer set to do my shading and highlights work. The majority of these layers are set to Overlay which when dropped on top of another layer will lighten or darken by paint/filling an area with white or black. It took about six separate layers set to different Opacity levels to get the look I was going for. Add a few more layers for the simple gradient in back and the smoke of Smiley's cigar and we're good to go. Hope this helps and if you have questions or suggestions make use of that Comments field.