Finding a style in ink

[feeb]

Heya.

I've literally gone years... like several years without posting in an art forum in the spirit of community feedback, and I really miss it. I've focused on other things, and have just about fallen into total obscurity. If you know me at all, it's probably because you're serious oldschool. I'm one of the original CA forum members, and before that, one of the original eatpoo forum members (6th to join), and before that, I was actively posting at sijun. Holy shit, I want it back. I want the back and forth... get all excited about this shit again. Do me a favor and give me any kind of feedback on this new stuff I've been working on. What you like/dislike about it... I've gotten a pretty big response from my facebook friends on this stuff, so I'm feeling like I might be on the right track here.

As you can see in the following image, I'm playing with style that's still within the parameters of old-time-y mustached gents. I don't know where it'll go from here, but I'm having fun exploring. The Cthulhu gent is an indicator of the type of fun I'm going for. The final image is actually the catalyst. The flowery girl, which is not the final version, is included because that shit took too long not to share. These are all on claybord, which allows you to scratch back into it to get white line. Most of these are small. You can see my fat fingers in the last image for scale. The girl is by far the largest at 8x10. The 4 in the first image are each 4x4".

Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks for those willing to take the time.

[AldoKatayanagi]

Welcome back

I really like the small portraits. I think they'd look better with some areas of denser black, like you used in the last one.

I don't think the girl's as successful. The marks aren't as interesting and there isn't any one area that really holds my attention. I would like to see another white on black picture with the kind of marks from the smaller portraits

[RichieLee]

Hello Feeb,

I'm a long time lurker on here, and I love inkwork anyway, so it's a given that I love these. They look amazing and I agree with AldoKatayanagi I think the portraits and the last picture are the strongest ones. Looks like those old woodcut prints you find in old books. Great work.

[feeb]

Excellent feedback! I really agree with everything you guys are saying. Most of all, I don't use nearly enough blacks. Huge thanks.

[NikitaN]

I really like all the detail, but how is this done exactly? I've never seen this method myself, I did some hand pressed relief prints like this but its difficult to get the same quality you get.


That is a cossack, you should try looking them up they also had some nice mustachios.

[milokey]

I actually like the girl quite a bit. I really think her problem lies in the lack of some values. Value in ink is really easy to spot as black is as dark as you can go, white is the brightest, and any sort of hatching or texturing is grey.

I dropped whatever texture you'd started at the front of her face because it was just really distracting and not a good value to have up on the girls face. I also broke up a lot of the lines on the girl so that the shadow would curve more naturally around her arm. (as is, the hatching made her arm look like it had sharp angles, which isn't true to the form of the arm) I also add more white and black values on the face.

I changed the dress, but the way is was almost worked too. I couldn't really make up my mind on that one, but I think the white might be slightly better.

Oh, I also added a bit more black to the hair. It seemed distracting to have the big white space in the hair, when its not really an area of interest.

And the flowers are more of a suggestion of what you could do to bring more interest to the background and balance out the whole piece. The flowers you already have are really nice. Those and the darker spirals on her arms are probably my favorite parts.

[arenhaus]

Yes, definitely use areas of nearly solid black. They give body and substance to this inking style. If an image consists mostly from stripy hatching, it can get too noisy; solid areas or areas with a different texture become a valuable compositional tool in this technique.

[sone_one]

i remember your nickname... good to have you back because these totally float my boat.