ARTWORK: ORIGINALS FOR SALE
As promised, the original pages from The Black Diamond Detective Agency are now on sale at The Beguiling. Note that all pages have been signed by me in pencil since those scans were made. I'll put a permanent link in the sidebar in case you take a notion later. Meanwhile...

2: More on zipatones. Here's Dave Sim making an in-joke on the cover of Cerebus #207 about the way I tended to use the stuff.


I wanted to create a painterly style, as opposed to a drawn one constructed with lines. Normal comicbook drawing has always looked dead on the page to my eyes. I needed a style that could suggest light and air. I'd dab in black ink marks, lay down tonal slabs not necessarily contained by lines, and then dab white paint on top of that. If you click to zoom you can see the textures.


The above is a window box of flowers in a foreground, if you're the sort of viewer to whom such things matter. Below is a panel I was always happy with. The only significant drawn line in it is made by the diagonal cut edge of tone in the left foreground.


The above are from images I scanned in enlargements from Alec: The King Canute Crowd (circa 1985-86) and offered to Ca et La to use as chapter headings and endpapers in their edition last year, but they preferred to go with a different approach.
In my last few books I've used actual paint in full colour and no longer need to find ways to simulate 'painterly' effects. I miss the old dots though... maybe time to get back to them for a spell.