I pencil, using reference material where ever I can. Most of the time I scour the internet. For poses and expressions, sometimes I use a mirror and myself and sometimes, if I’m lucky, I get to recruit my beautiful girlfriend Ali.

Ali models for Captain Sera

My favorite pencil is a dixon ticonderoga HB #2. I typically work on cardstock or 80lb weight smooth paper.

Captain Sera CCF Art Pencils

Then comes the inks. Usually a combination of .7 or .5 mm Gel writers, Pentel and Pilot, and Unibal Micro 207 and Uni Jetstream 1.0 signing pens for details like eyes, nose, mouth, hair and fingers.

Captain Sera CCF art Inks.

Finally, the colors. I use both GIMP 2.6 and Corel Painter Essentials. GIMP is great for darkening inks and creating transparent layers and converting an image from one format to another, in this case jpg to png. It was requested that I provide the Captain Sera character on a transparent background so that she could be joined with over a hundred other characters in a single piece of art for the Comic Creators for Freedom fund drive and PNG format allows me to do just that.

Captain Sera CCF in Color on transparent background

Corel Painter is the principal program for coloring and using multiple brushes–watercolor washes, airbrushing and at times color pen work–to accomplish a range of textures and saturation levels. Then GIMP is great to go back to once the painting is finished to dial back the hues or add post-production style effects such as lens flare (which has it’s proponents and detractors, but I think it’s great for sci-fi vistas or sword and sorcery razzle dazzle). For this piece I went ahead and added a background so that I could post the piece at my webcomic site and help generate buzz for the drive.

Captain Sera CCF Color Art

You can see Sera with her webcomic sisters at the Comic Creators for Freedom website starting January 9th, Human Trafficking Awareness Day. The Fund Drive runs through the 20th of January.