"Surveilance"

No doodle for this one: a good example of spontaneous creation while in the process of working on other panels. It's like a mental announcer comes on and says "we interrupt this broadcast with this special breaking report" and BIFF! from outta left field when you least expect it the muse reaches on over and takes the wheel

But instead of a sketchbook scan of any idle inspiration I do have a rather funny anecdote to share about this particular panel. After a critique of ongoing student projects I caught myself saying to them "what's the worst that can happen? You screw it up and start over." This was in response to some apprehension amongst a few folks who were commenting on how intimidating using pen + ink can be if you're not used to using it, and are unfamiliar with the occasional learning curve that gets splattered all over the place. 

Penciled version #1

So what I said wasn't exactly either a vote of confidence nor much of a consolation. But in retrospect it did highlight what may be a fundamental divide between the experienced artist who doesn't suffer through the dreaded "paralysis through analysis" that I see hamstring many a struggling student. From my personal perspective it's only a slight speedbump in the overall process - oops, oh well... just redraw it (or let it slide as you go on to the next one): progress not perfection!

Penciled version #2

I mention this only because I had to eat my own damn words when I "lost" the original penciled panel for version #1, and after wasting a couple hours of tossing the home, studio, office, classrooms and car, I just had to resign myself to re-creating it. I had already scanned the first version, as evidenced by finding a jpeg file of it on my desktop - hence the "Penciled version #1" first posted above.

Cat-Scan: "cold cat-hode fluorescent lamp"… no worry about any cat-aracts

Occasionally I utilize a glorious tabloid-sized scanner that I have access to, as opposed to piecing together scans from the letter-sized Epson at home (an skilled artform unto itself). In theory every time you redraw something it ought to to improve.