Art Talk: Issue 10

[kesher]

Last issue we had a very entertaining and informative thread about the art people were submitting, both in-process and finished, and we talked a lot about techniques used in the different illustrations.

So, to start it off for this issue, I'm posting, not my own drawing, but the first drawing anyone's ever done of something I've written! jasons stepped up and took a crack at: The Mantipede!






So, Jason, first off, AWESOME. Maybe I'm biased, but this is pretty much exactly how I pictured them. The composition of the picture is particularly strong.

Did you ink it with markers?

[calithena]

Wow, that is cool.

We can use this in the issue, right?

[geoffrey]

Amazing.

[jasons]

Thanks, fellas.
Cal: Absolutely!
Kesher: I used my trusty cheap-o synthetic fiber #0 brush and Higgins ink for all the lines and filled in the big shadows in the foreground with marker. The areas where there seems to be gradation in the black are all evidence that I should have let my ink evaporate a bit before using. I'll fiddle with the contrast in photoshop to achieve a more consistant black.
Also, thanks for posting this for me. I'll figure out how to post images one of these days...

[kesher]

Ah, that's what gives the lines their quality---cool.

As for posting pictures, at least the quick way I do it, is to upload the picture to my photobucket account, copy the "image" link it provides for you, and simply paste it into my post.

I've been doing strictly pencil stuff for the last few issues, but I think I'm itching to bust out the ink...

[kelvingreen]

Wowsers! That's really good, and the pose and composition are very much in the Mighty Marvel Manner. Brilliant stuff.

Here's my stab at what a Sepulcrow might look like:



Inked with a combination of cheap markers for the thick lines and large areas of black, and fancy graphic pens for everything else. I have brushes and India ink, but I'm terrible with both.

I scan in black and white, so I never have any problems with varying shades of black, and of late, I've been using a blue pencil for the layout stage, as it doesn't show up in the scan. It doesn't erase very easily, but I've found that my sketching has become more controlled as a result, and it does lead to less processing at the scanning stage too. After years of scorning the technique, I am now a full convert to blue-lining, and I've been raiding my art boxes for blue pencils!

[trollman]

I second scanning the image as black & white - the blacks come out solid black, and the whites come out solid white.

I prefer to sketch stuff in very lightly with a regular ol' pencil, ink, and then erase the pencils with a kneaded eraser. The catch is, you have to pencil with a really light touch, and erasing with the kneaded eraser can make the ink look a bit faded. It is fine for scanning into B&W, but you might want to touch up the ink a little after erasing so the original drawing looks sharper.

If precise placement is really important, I'll do a sketch on another sheet of paper. Once I get the drawing right, I trace it with a sheet of tracing paper. Then I shade the backside of the tracing paper, which allows me to transfer the drawing to the final paper/canvas.

As a general rule, I try not to do any erasing until after the ink is done. The more you erase, the more it tears up the paper, and the more it "roughs up" the image.

[geoffrey]

Nice work, Kelvin! I'm jealous of the talents of the artists here.

[erikbattle]

Love the Mantipede and the Sepulcrow! I'll be posting my in-progress shots soon.

[kelvingreen]

Aug 30, 2010 20:26:57 GMT -6 jasons said:

The areas where there seems to be gradation in the black are all evidence that I should have let my ink evaporate a bit before using. I'll fiddle with the contrast in photoshop to achieve a more consistant black.

For what it's worth, I'd leave it as it is. The lighter brush strokes give a feeling of texture, which is only appropriate for a surface made up of hundreds of writhing arthropods.

It really is a great piece. Cover-worthy, I'd say. I'd love to see it in colour, with some Tales From the Crypt-style lettering at the top.

[jensen]

Jasons, I can only join everyone else in saying: Wow! That is very nicely done, mate.

Aug 31, 2010 1:01:12 GMT -6 kelvingreen said:

Here's my stab at what a Sepulcrow might look like:

Luvverly! I hadn't considered making it a close-up, but it works quite nicely.


As for the whole scanning and image handling discussion, I must admit to being rather lazy: usually, I simply sketch the drawing with an ordinary HB pencil (0.7 mm mechanical is my current tool of choice), then inking with whatever pen I have at hand. I rarely bother with erasing, unless the penciling has been particularly thick, since it all gets cleaned up digitally, anyway.

There's a lot of good suggestion in this thread, though. I might experiment with blue pencils, to see if it will work as well for me as it does for KG - oh, and by the way, kelvin: would you be amenable towards seeing a drawing of a singing sword?

[kelvingreen]

Sept 1, 2010 5:13:08 GMT -6 jensen said:

Luvverly! I hadn't considered making it a close-up, but it works quite nicely.

Thanks! I had one other idea, which was a wider shot, an homage to that bit in The Thing when the head sprouts legs and runs off, but it took the focus off the Sepulcrow a bit, so I went back to my original idea and made it big.

Sept 1, 2010 5:13:08 GMT -6 jensen said:

by the way, kelvin: would you be amenable towards seeing a drawing of a singing sword?

I would positively love to see what a singing sword looks like!

[jasons]

DM: Yeah, a bunch of undead and something weird standing on one of the skeletons...
Player 1: HUH? What is it?
DM: (brandishing pic of sepulcrow) THIS!
Player 1: What the...?!
Player 2: You've got to be %$&*ing kidding me!
That scene from The Thing has got to be one of the most outrageously over-the-top awesome in cinema history.

[kelvingreen]

Yeah, that's the scene.

I might post my sketches of that version, if I can find them.

[jensen]

Sept 1, 2010 11:28:25 GMT -6 kelvingreen said:

Sept 1, 2010 5:13:08 GMT -6 jensen said:

by the way, kelvin: would you be amenable towards seeing a drawing of a singing sword?

I would positively love to see what a singing sword looks like!

[18 Spears]

I love the pommel!

[ant]

jasons, kelvingreen and jensen -- amazing stuff, gentlemen!

To contribute, while not in the same league as the other great artists here this may give you a bit of an idea about my own process for Fight On!

From the series of cartoons for Random's Assortment (go contribute to his thread now! ).

Below is the first and final sketch. The three drawings I did for this Issue all flowed well and I didn't have to spend a lot of time fiddling (a bad habit of mine).

The sketch was done with a cheap HB pencil on a school sketch book (my wife bought a bunch of these in bulk for me). You don't need fancy materials to do art!




Once I'm happy with the sketch I scan it in with my trusty Canoscan Lite 25. I then open it up in Photoshop (currently using the 30 day trial version of CS5) for inking and touch-ups with my even trustier Intuos3.

The final product. Note the repositioning of the figures for some better dramatics.

[kelvingreen]

That is almost exactly what I imagined the Singing Sword looking like. Nice work!

[kelvingreen]

Sept 6, 2010 7:48:47 GMT -6 ant said:

You don't need fancy materials to do art!

Very true! I have lots of fancy art materials, but I often find a ballpoint and some printer paper works just fine.

Sept 6, 2010 7:48:47 GMT -6 ant said:

Once I'm happy with the sketch I scan it in with my trusty Canoscan Lite 25.

I've had the model 30 for years now, and I have no complaints. A very solid, very reliable scanner.

Sept 6, 2010 7:48:47 GMT -6 ant said:

I then open it up in Photoshop (currently using the 30 day trial version of CS5) for inking and touch-ups with my even trustier Intuos3.

I switched to the Gimp a few years ago and haven't looked back. I'm sure it doesn't compare at a higher level, but for the stuff I do, it's more than good enough.

And cease this "same league" nonsense immediately; this is great work!

[ant]

Sept 6, 2010 14:06:09 GMT -6 kelvingreen said:

I switched to the Gimp a few years ago and haven't looked back. I'm sure it doesn't compare at a higher level, but for the stuff I do, it's more than good enough.

And cease this "same league" nonsense immediately; this is great work!

I've thought about switching to Gimp ... how does it go working with your graphics tablet? That's a big selling point for me for Photoshop.

And I'll try and curb the modesty.

[kelvingreen]

Sept 6, 2010 16:32:19 GMT -6 ant said:

I've thought about switching to Gimp ... how does it go working with your graphics tablet?

It seems to work well enough for my purposes, but then again I've yet to make exhaustive use of my tablet (a Wacom Bamboo One) so I can't say how well Gimp works for advanced techniques.

I've had no problems with it though. A few updates back, it would crash if you connected the tablet after you'd started the program, but that seems to have been fixed.

[jensen]

Sept 6, 2010 14:02:11 GMT -6 kelvingreen said:

That is almost exactly what I imagined the Singing Sword looking like. Nice work!

Thanks!

Here's a commissioned piece for FO! #10:

[kesher]

The composition rocks! I love the partial head in the upper-right corner...

[kelvingreen]

Yes, very dynamic and interesting composition, and I like the general style too, which seems straight out of some Saturday morning cartoon too excellent by half to have existed in our reality.

[jasons]

ant: Excellent cartooning, lively, kinetic, and fun. I'm impressed by the seemingly organic feel you get out of that software. I feel like a dinosaur with ink stained shoes.
jensen: Great expressive faces, as always. That caveman witchdoctor exudes a certain wicked confidence. Your stuff frequently puts me in mind of (the great) John Kricfalusi. Did you ink it with a brush?

[Deleted]

celurian.deviantart.com/art/Search-Gloves-178587474


- a thief with silken-gloved hands, running them carefully along a wall looking for traps (and about to find one?)


Hope you like them. And let me know if you tink it needs a change. Good work to all the artists on the forum!

[jasons]

Very good work, celurian. Tells it all with great economy.

[kelvingreen]

Yes, I like it a lot. Simple and to the point.

[jensen]

Very elegantly done, celurian! I like how you highlighted the brick trigger to show how the 'seeing-eye' gloves function - it would become even more evident if the bricks had a darker greyish color, but by leaving them white, the picture will probably blend into the page layout better. Nice work!

[jensen]

kesher, kelvingreen, jasons: Thank you very much! I must confess I've never heard of this Kricfalusi person; perhaps I should try to find out more about him - if only I had access to some globe-spanning repository of information on every conceivable topic... Oh, wait
As for the inking: the fine line-work was done with a 0.5 mm ink pen, whereas with some of the broader outlines I used a nifty brush-pen, which looks entirely like any ordinary pen until you take the cap off - presto! It's an ink brush! Plus, because it's got its own internal ink supply, there's no need for fussing about with ink pots that may get knocked over in the heat of battle -> giant mess.