Wednesday, January 12, 2011

New Year New Drawing


Haven't had much time to draw for myself lately, so it was nice to take a break and noodle around with brush and ink again. If you're curious about my process I tend to start pieces like this by sketching in red on the cintiq:

Why pencil digitally you ask? I only do it because it's faster than pencilling on paper (for me) and all the cheats photoshop has to offer for tweaking drawing mistakes makes it a PLUS! That being said, I'd like to be able to move away from digital and work more analogue eventually, because who wants to stare at a monitor all day?? But I digress, after this step I print the image onto bristol board and then it's onto my favourite step... INK!



(Inked with size 01 Windsor&Newton Series 7 sable brush)

Why favourite? Inking is very zen to me, all the blood, sweat and tears (copious, embarrassing amounts of tears) that went into the pencilling stage are long behind and I can zone out and let my hand and the brush do as it will. After I'm done I scan it back into the computer, take out the red channel in photoshop, noodle around with the levels and TADAH I'm done. In this case I kind of liked step 2 better where the brush strokes are showing, but for a professional piece you'd probably have to up the levels and keep the blacks at their blackest. ALRIGHTY! And that's today's lesson-blessin' with yer ol' pal Katie!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Neat!

Funny - I'm completely opposite. I prefer to draw on paper and then Ink digitally. I'll have to try it your way - maybe it'll improve my hand to ink traditionally.

Glad to see the pre-levels version. That always throws me - seeing perfect black ink - makes me think I'm doing something wrong when my results are inconsistent.

Great pic Katie!

Jolls said...

Huh, I find it super interesting that you pencil digitally and then ink with... well, real ink! Most people I know (myself included) tend to do it the other way around. Great process though!

JAKE WYATT said...

Katie... this is gorgeous. Love how you designed your blacks, love the gesture, expression, the little baby tree-ling. Love it all.