The Mayflower

Another spread from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This is the big splashy first glimpse of the Mayflower.

Here is the thumbnail sketch:

Everything’s there that needs to be, but I was concerned that the direction of the drawing didn’t show the Billingtons being rowed toward the Mayflower in the background.

In the tight sketch, I turned the foreground boat around so we’re looking at its stern as it rows away from us. I had to scan this in two pieces—sorry.

When I drew the tight sketch, I worked half-size, so it was fairly easy to freehand the lines of the ship.  When I inked the scene, I worked at 125%, which is pretty big.  I don’t have enough control with a brush to competently ink in those lines at the larger size.  I wound up ruling them with a rapidograph, and used a homemade french curve—I traced the ship’s line onto a piece of watercolor board and cut along the line with a razor blade.  It gave me a nice smooth template to rule the lines with.

Here’s the inked and colorized image:

Colorization by Vince Dorse.  Click on the picture to embiggen.

Update—Vince has some more on the colorization process over here.