Outlaw's Apprentice pin-up

Chris Schweizer recently kickstarted his new book Outlaw's Apprentice: Broken Blade and once I saw he was collecting some pinups from other artists for a Kickstarter bonus sketchbook, I strongarmed Chris into letting me do one.

The kickstarter campaign was close to ending when I offered to do the art, and so it was a race to get it done so it could offer any boost/promotion/incentive for some final backers before the campaign closed.

To the left you can see the final colored artwork, and in this post, I'll break down the art process it took to get me there.

I've long admired Chris Schweizer, not only as a comic artist, but also as a craftsman, designer, teacher, and human. He is truly a renaissance man and I advise following him on social media: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/schweizercomics.bsky.social & IG: https://www.instagram.com/schweizercomics/ as well as his patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/ChrisSchweizer.

His latest series is about an apprentice glassmaker who finds himself along with the mercenary he's apprenticed to in trouble with the law while standing up for what's morally right. The series is free to read on Webtoon or Chris' Patreon: https://outlawsapprentice.com/

I started by drawing the main character Otis on a a sheet of copy paper. My original idea was for him to be walking balance-beam-style on a fallen tree as his outlawed companion Erska walked along side. But after I scanned in my Otis drawing, I realized Erska wouldn't fit, where I planned without blocking some part of Otis' silhouette.

I drew a few loose poses for Erska before settling on this one of her. Each drawing was tinted in Photoshop to help me see them better as forms and I blocked in color for each also to help me understand what the forms all were.

I quickly digitally drew in some background shapes before calling this layout done and ready to ink.

The layout was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of 300 series Strathmore bristol 9"x12". On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol to use the printout as a guide while I inked.

I used Copic Multiliner SP pens for the inking, mostly the 0.7 nib, but I switched off to a 0.3 for the eyes since they were smaller and required more finesse.

Chris told me that the book's dimensions were going to be a smaller mass-market paperback size, and so I was careful to not over detail the inks so they's reduce well without becoming muddy. Because of that, I focused on good contour lines for the characters without much texture, and bolder black shapes for the background.

The inked drawing was then scanned into Photoshop. Worried I wouldn't be giving Chris enough time to promote with my art, I sent him the inked version as I worked on the colors. That first step of coloring is called color flatting. It's basically a digital coloring-in-the-lines on a professional level using only flat colors (no rendering, no textures, etc). 

I started with the color palette in Chris's comics, but then altered some of the hues and values to meet up with my own coloring preferences and to compliment the background colors. 

At this stage I also established color holds (areas where I want the linework to be a color other than black) on the tree, the plants and grass, the character's pupils, and Erska's upper lip.

Here again is the final colored piece. I used the Dodge and Burn tools mostly to add highlights and shadows all while using a stock textured brush to get some nice natural variance to the colors.

Outlaw's Apprentice: Broken Blade is available to read free online now: https://outlawsapprentice.com/ with printed books being available hopefully early next year from Chris. And I know this is the first book in a long series and that he plans to start on book 2 very soon.