Today I am shifting gears, to talk about my drawing technique. Specifically, the one I’m using for my book illustrations.
That means I’m going traditional.
Well…
Mostly.
It started back when I got my first digital art program: photoshop. Back then, I had a mouse. No tablet. Just a mouse. Yeah. You can imagine how difficult it was to draw digital pictures with a mouse. So I got a scanner, and learned that if I scanned my traditional drawings onto the computer, I could digitally color them. Eventually, I got skilled enough at coloring with a mouse to make works like this:
Note: the above image is fanart, and the characters: Kenshin, and Tomoe are not my property.
Yep. Uh-huh. That was done with a pencil, a scanner, and a mouse. If you’re thinking maybe I’m just a tiny bit crazy for spending that kind of time torturing my hand with a mouse, well to that I say… yeah. I got nothing. It’s nuts.
But then I got my first tablet, and my digital art world changed. Soon, I discovered the joys of making sketches digitally, then printing them out to finish traditionally. I became very fond of this reversal, because it allows me to maximize the benefits of both worlds. Digital sketches let me save them on my phone, so I can spend time during my busy schedule studying them, and regularly making changes, and finishing them traditionally allows me to capture that very specific charm only pen and paper drawings can achieve.
With the picture on my tablet and my phone, I can spend the time needed to study an image, even if I have no down time to do so. How? Simple. Every time I pull out my phone to check a message, it would be there as a background, giving me a chance to study it. Inevitably, I would find problems, and when that happened, I could make the changes needed next time I get back to my tablet. Then I would save it, and study it again, and keep repeating the process, until I’m happy with it. Then the real fun begins.
I make clean line art from the sketch, like this, and print it.
With the lines ready to go, it's time to grab my supplies.
Copic gray scale markers, a white gel pen, a good eraser, and a black bic pen.
Got that?
Good, because these tools create magic.
Here is a sample for a work in progress so you can see what I mean.
How do I create this look? With four simple steps, which you could do for a fully traditional drawing as easily as one started with a computer. Please note: if you are doing full traditional, you need a pencil drawing for the start. (Not inked).
Step one: go over the line art with the copics first. This is important, because if you do this after you add ink, it will bleed the bic pen lines. Shade in the darker areas, leave things that should look lighter as paper-white. Classic cell shading can be added as well, for added depth, but that is a matter of personal preference, because the bic pen is for shading.
Step two: pic up your bic, and begin hatching and cross hatching over the picture, following shadow lines, and the curves of the surface you’re shading. Press hard and go over the area in tight, close together strokes for the shadows. Press lightly and lift as you go to create a nice, smooth gradient in the lightest areas.
Step three: grab that eraser. You will want to wait for the bic pen to fully dry so you don’t smear anything. If you’re confused, thinking, ‘but erasers can’t remove pen,’ you’re right. But you aren’t using the eraser to correct mistakes. You’re using it to lift a fraction of dark off the lightest points to add even more range of light shades. Run the eraser over highlighted areas, to lift some of the pen off.
Step four: grab that gel pen. Remember, this is not a way of removing mistakes, either. The gel pen produces a whiter white than the paper, and if you just go over spots that you don’t want to show up, it will stand out. Also, you need to do this last, because if you try to go over any places that you put white gel pen ink down on, the pen’s ability to produce a range of shades will go away completely. You will be left with dark, jagged lines. So what do you do with the gel pen? Simple. Go to the spots you really want to shine and stand out. Carefully apply a little glow, and boom, now even the white of the paper serves as an extra shade against the white of the gel.
In the end, if you have the patience to spend literal hours and even days on a single picture—because that is what it amounts to—you can get a final product looking something like the image below.
In summary, my process is the marriage of digital advantages and traditional charm, held together by patience and repetition. I personally think the final result is well worth it, and I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into my process.
Happy drawing, Stardust. See you next blog.
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