Ok, that does it, I'm scanning in pen.

Just finished up 3 more pages of Glockblob (what a lie that is... one page was already done but lost in the mess of all the folders I've yet to organize, one was half done and fully storyboarded, and the third is really just one panel that I tried to pass off as two, shh.) and I think I've decided that I'm going to start moving towards a color-cover, black-and-white panel version... I might not stick with it, but I'll at least try. What drove me to such lengths? This panel:
which is not finished in any way (the lines aren't even half-erased, which is as erased as my pitiful little Magic Rub can get anything), but still has more of the look I was going for. The lines are (fairly) fluid, I got to crosshatch (a wonderful stress reliever), and I can let The Grimy Pierate fade into the background and leave my focus on the white space on Glockblob's front. (As ridiculous as all this is, I can say I've never intentionally researched any of this... it's all a combination of Mr. Rinehart, the Tenth Anniversary Calvin and Hobbes Collection, and Art History.) I also like the way that dust cloud works, being just a suggestion formed from line segments that don't necessarily form a coherent blob. But, after scanning it in, tracing and coloring, I'm left with this:

I did make an effort to at least shadow a little of the crosshatching on to Glockblob, although I didn't want to take the time to try to do it by hand (and who can blame me?). There's a few problems. I love the color aspect of Glockblob, but I haven't mastered it yet, and lavender or whatever the heck color he's supposed to be just doesn't draw the eye the same way a white field does. Add to this the shakiness of all the lines (and this is one of the better panels on that count), the sudden solidarity of the dust cloud (although I am mighty fond of my semitransparency) and the way that Ye Grimy Pierate suddenly looks like as good a focus as any, despite the fact that I really try to tone down his colors and make him fade into the background. And all of this is before Comicify! comes into play. I did experiment a little bit today with coloring in a pen drawing straight from the scanner; it's problematic, but not quite as bad as I anticipated, so maybe that's what I'll do. I love color... I want to get to where I can have faith that the "real" colors will be apparent even when they're not the colors actually present in the picture, a la Batman: Year One, but right now I have a hard time resisting the temptation to make red things red, so maybe baby steps are in order.
There's such a satisfaction to finishing the penwork for a page, and while finishing the tracing and coloring is still good, that's only because the initial peak was so high that the letdown doesn't obliterate it. I'm just hoping I can somehow do justice to the Pierette Landing page, which contains my most thrilling crosshatches yet.