On a trip this summer to Porto this summer, I discovered why it is such a popular tourist destination in Portgual. Aside from the port wine of course, the heritage Ribeira and surrounding area is just packed with scenic lookouts over the water and the city. It was almost an overabundance of spectacular old buildings to take in, to sketch and to photograph. Here are some of the sketches I managed to get when not busy stuffing my face full of olives.

Inspired by the amazing work being done by comic colourists, I wanted to explore adding some dramatic lighting and atmosphere to a quick inked sketch. Even though the image I was working with wasn't very dark, it lended itself to being heavily in shadow. I wanted to capture a sort of haziness with a bit of dim lighting coming from a window so I built up different layers of desaturated colour and filled in large dark areas to accentuate the highlights. I finished off with some rougher texture to give it a grittier flavour. These are two of my favourite colour experimentation results.

There's a cool initiative that's been happening for a few years called InkTober. I'm not sure why I've only just heard about it, but basically for the month of October, artists from the world over, contribute drawings trying to produce a drawing day.

I haven't really kept up with the pace, but here's a brush pen sketch of Buffalo from this month. I'm always intrigued by Buffalo driving through it, seeing it's different areas. The revitalized downtown with arena and ballpark, the waterfront, the faded Rust Belt factories, the dense urban decay and the older spires and deco buildings that remind me of Gotham.