Happy 80th Wonderwoman!

 A bit late due to work but a Wind Down for Wonder Woman Day 21

Skull Kids designs on T-shirts!!

 

Great news! I have opened a TeepPublic store featuring a whole bunch of my Skull Kids illustrations as designs for T-shirts, mugs and more! I have also gone over 8K in followers on my Instagram Account/ Drawmanley!

Geppetto's Workshop A pen and Ink demo, start to finish by Mike Manley.

Some Recent Phantom Art

 Here are some recent pencils and inks from the end of the last Phantom story and the beginning of the newest one. My buddy Bret Blevins chipped in on some inking help with the new story to try and gain a little time. That meant for those strips they are inked digitally in Clip Studio paint. I have been doing most of the strip this was since the pandemic and my assistant Liang having to stay home. So I pencil traditional then send her the pages and she inks the backgrounds digital and sends them back and I ink the figures on another layer and combine them in Photoshop. Not ideal, but we don't live in ideal times and we have to adapt.

Pen and Ink Skull Kids

In the evenings after my long days of drawings the strips  I like to relax just by drawing for myself. I call these Wind Down drawings. Usually done late into the night, often while listening to audiobooks. Back in the beginning of the year these skeleton kids just popped out of my head onto the paper one night. I don't know where they came form--maybe some subconscious reaction to the pandemic--I don't know. But they are an awful lot of fun to draw and I am working on a graphic novel featuring them I hope to bring into print. The freedom I have working for my self, my own imagination allows me to work in ways that I don't get to in my commercial jobs including doing a lot of old school pen and ink rendering which I love to do. I am a huge fan of the great pen and ink artists from the last century and of course Bernie Wrightson and Moebius. There is something relaxing and meditative  about doing this type of drawing and technique.

Pencil to Pencil live on Youtube!

We have now added our YouTube channel for our podcast at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDkMGQL6xhBD-iS616XdPFg which should be resolving to just Pencil to Pencil soon. YouTube has to do some magic trick. But now you can watch and subscribe on YouTube or over on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PenciltoPencil. the podcast is broadcast as a simulcast on both platforms  or listen over on our website  http://penciltopencil.com/--so you can't have an excuse to not find us and listen! We have had some great guests in the past few months and we have a great line-up of guest from comics, animation and illustration coming up in the next 8 weeks or so, which is about how far we have laid out the schedule.

William Wray Podcast

Listen to our interview with animation legend and Art director on the new Harley Quinn show William Wray! http://penciltopencil.com/episode/pencil-to-pencil-live-with-william-wray/ or watch it on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/547783545747706/videos/1391008271091867

This is a pinup of my buddy Jamar Nicholas's character Leon Protector of the Playground for the Heruary Challenge 2020 #mikemanley #heruary2020 #leonprotectoroftheplayground #jamarnicholas #blackhistorymonth2020 #comics #comicbooks #comicart #comicbookartist