Usually the client hands me tight pencils or somewhat looser pencils to ink but in this exceptional case I was handed a 9X12 preliminary layout sketch to a cover of CABLE by Randy Green, separate from the actual pencilled board by Randy, to finish. While this means that I needed to finish the pencils and then ink it I had the advantage(?) of having the actual inked comic and cover for reference. So it’s not like doing full ink finishes since I’m simulating the work that Randy and the uncredited inker performed. Simulating is a good term because I generally copied without the use of a lightbox to trace the final art. I referred to art within the comic to figure out what Marrow’s lower right leg would look like without the cover copy covering it. And being that the concept sketch didn’t faithfully correspond to what was set for the cover some things don’t quite match up, like the foreground dagger obscuring the book’s title. Rendered in probably similar degrees of both brush and marker with some zip added along the bottom of the image to simulate the effect used by the cover color artist this job was completed 4/23/03.
About Me
Bob is the inking half of the Sal Velluto art team collaboration on such projects as Marvel’s critically-acclaimed BLACK PANTHER,’99-’02 leading to a 2003 Comicboards “Ooks” Award for “Best Inker” & two “Squiddies” awards for “Best Inker” (2001 along with “Best Creative Team” win and 2002 tied with Mark Farmer and tied for “Best Multi-Part Story”), and many other projects with Sal since 1997 and other artists at Marvel, DC, Acclaim, Malibu, Penny-Farthing Press, Power Comics, IDW, Kingstone, Thrilling Nostalgia Comics, Harris Comics, Topps, Wildstorm, New England Comics, Valiant and several others. While he’s been primarily an ink artist he’s also been a columnist for Sketch magazine and First Comics News. Bob’s a comic book collector and unofficial historian who has acted as a “Master of the Obscure” at the Marvel Appendix site, been a longtime member of the “Jarvis Heads” and a “group expert” at Facebook groups. He’s the founder/director of the official non-profit Inkwell Awards and advocate since 2008. Bob has been credited with “Special Thanks” along with his “Storyteller” colleagues Christopher Priest & Sal Velluto in the record-breaking film BLACK PANTHER (2018) and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (2022).
Contact Me
180 Park Street
New Bedford, MA 02740
dmralmond@gmail.com