I’ve been getting some questions recently as to how I put the strip together, so what better way to explain than by showing off the first step of the process: The Sketch.

The image above is from comic 091: Aint he a stinker?

Once I figure out how many panels I need and create the boxes, I’ll start sketching, using a regular circular brush with opacity set to pen pressure. (PS) At this phase, nothing is really set in stone. While the above sketch more or less matches the final product, often times sketches serve only to figure out the blocking and what facial expressions might look like.

Once that’s done, I’ll switch my brush to 100% opacity to ink over the sketch for the hard outlines you see in the strip. Then color, then text, then… sleep usually.