In my drawings I have always worked to very well defined lines like the cartoonists I’ve admired most (Howard Cruse for example). It’s only lately that I’m discovering that if I let my lines get a little scruffy, like in my roughs, the finished artwork seems more lively.

And it’s easy in Procreate, to simply make a duplicate layer of the rough blue lines instead of just inking over them in a fresh blank layer, and then changing the line color from blue to black. I will still tidy things up a bunch, but not to the point I’m taking away the scruffiness. That most recent drawing I posted the other day is, I think, the beginning of a new(ish) style for me, though I did it once before. But that one happened because I was feeling too tired to do my usual ink lines so I just copied the roughs and made them look inked and low and behold it worked. That last one was a deliberate attempt to duplicate the effect of that other one and it worked too.

I’m going to stick with it…at least for a while…and see where it goes. At least for the one-offs if not the multi panel cartoons. I’ve got another I’m working on I’ll post about later.