Do you paint behind the speech bubbles?

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

It depends. If there’s something important or necessary to the continuity of the scene I draw it in and lower the opacity of the bubble to give a peek of what’s behind it. If I’m pressed for time And/or the stuff behind the bubble isn’t particularly important then I don’t bother.

[Missapogee]

unlike a lot of the people on this thread, my speech bubbles are both a part of my initial sketches and the first thing I do, but because my art is pretty freeform (lineless and with more painterly) Often behind my speech bubbles Will just be the general shapes that never got properly shaded/ cleaned up

I actually think it's fun to see art at a very different stage of completion attached to finished stuff!

[Caro]

I work traditionally so I always do my speech balloons (and panel borders) before I ink the rest of it. I like knowing where they are so that I don’t end up overdrawing things that won’t even end up showing up and I feel like having that figured out is just useful for the way I layout my pages and make sure the dialogue is in the right spaces and the timing is correct. I think its a little harder for me to pull off if its an afterthought.

[ble]

I draw and color everything, and in the end, I draw the speech bubbles (i already figure where the text is gonna be, last thing is drawing the bubbles), because first, i do the regular normal page layout, and later I put it into a vertical format, and the speech bubbles is the one that got changed when vertical.