If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, it is basically ‘Brain-Paper-Computer’. Pretty simple really.
Anyway, diehard readers, most of the writing is done while I’m out running so I have no real distractions. I don’t script anything beforehand as I find it quite constrictive working to a script that I wrote for myself. I find it more helpful to rough things out in pencil and adjust from there. With comics, I don’t really see the distinction between drawing and writing. I think that they are interchangeable modes of thinking about the same thing.
Once I know what I want from the page I’m drawing, I start to rough it out;
As you can see from the picture, I draw in an A3 Seawhite sketchbook. I like the paper and find that the hardback cover keeps everything nice and neat. On a separate sheet, I have made myself a grid that I slide under each page. The blue lines measure 8ths and the red measure 3rds. I find this grid both flexible and rigid, which sounds like a contradiction, but I find it really useful in maintaining consistency in my layout.
With my grid in place, I start pencilling in my panels provisionally. I don’t start placing panels willy-nilly, I always have a plan, although it sometimes gets adjusted as I think it through. I sketch in with a Pilot Color Eno 0.7 propelling pencil in blue;
I sketch in blue after learning my lessons from sketching in pencil. If you aren’t aware of this particular trick of the trade, and spend lots of time erasing out your pencil lines, prepare to have your MIND BLOWN.
I start to get the rough forms in, and I mean ROUGH. At this point, this often barely constitutes drawing. What I’m trying to do at this point is to work out the flow and pacing of the page, including dialogue and sound effects. I construct the entire page like this and read it through a couple of times until I’m happy with it.
My next step is to ink in the borders.I put these in first for two reasons. One, for me it is the easiest way to start committing ink to the page. I find it eases me into ‘inking mode’, so I’m less fussy and pedantic about inking the rest of it, and secondly, I tend to overshoot my margins without a black line telling me not to go over it.
I ink in my borders with an Osmiroid 65 lever action refill fountain pen with a Rolatip Medium Soft nib. That’s probably too much detail, but it is a lovely pen with a really nice consistent line when you want it, plus I can fill it with whatever ink I so choose.
Speaking of ink, I like to use Platinum Carbon Ink. It isn’t the blackest or thickest ink I’ve used, but it will refill cartridge pens and brush pens without clogging them up, which is a bonus in my opinion. I use the same ink for everything when I’m drawing Oxford Clay, but more on that later. I ink with a Nikko G-nib, which is a flexible nib and gives you real control over line variance, from needle-thin to very thick lines and everything in between;
I ink in the characters and dialogue first because a) they are more fun to draw and b) they are the focal point of the strip. I try to draw them relatively spontaneously, which is one of the reasons I leave the pencils really rough. If I mess up, I use Deleter No. 2 white ink for corrections.
At this point, I sneak the page upstairs and dry it off with my wife’s hair drier. Not very rock’n’roll, no, but a very useful thing to do, and a lesson you need to learn only once! With all the characters and dialogue inked, I make a start on the backgrounds and scenery.
I build up the backgrounds using the G-nib dip pen;
With the background inked, I use a Sailor Recruit fountain pen filled with Platinum ink to add detail;
With the inks finished and blow-dried, the page is scanned. In Photoshop, the blue lines are removed using the channel mixer’s ‘black and white with blue filter’ preset, the levels are adjusted to get a nice white/black and the page is prepared for colouring digitally. I don’t think there is much else interesting about talking about how I use Photoshop, other than to say I use a Wacom, so I’ll end there. Thanks for reading.
Now, questions?
10 comments
Regarding the blue-line, can you not just scan in black-and-white mode (if your scanner supports it) to eliminate the blues, or is the end result different when it’s done with channels?
Thanks for your question, it’s a good point, I could do, although I’ve never had much in the way of good results whenever I’ve scanned anything using scanner presets. I’ve found that they are a bit of a blunt instrument to be honest. The overall quality of the drawing changes from page to page depending on how grubby my hands were/how tired I was/ how many mistakes I’d made on the way, so a one-size fits all approach to scanning, while it would be gloriously quicker, would keep all the inconsistencies of my original artwork.
The way I work with the black lines is to remove the blue using channels, adjust the levels until I’m happy that I’m working with purer black and white, not shades of grey, then load the all channels as a selection, invert it and fill with black on a new layer. That way I only have black lines on a layer by themselves, no white backgrounds. I’ve found it makes it easier for me to colour that way. You can do the same by setting the layer to multiply, but I am a pedant and like everything to be nice and neat!
The good news is that once I’ve adjusted the levels, I can just apply the process described above as a Photoshop Action, which really saves a lot of time and effort. I’ve even assigned it to a shortcut key so I don’t even need to open the actions panel. That’s just how lazy I really am!
Thanks for the clarification. I’ve gone the other way, as I could never manipulate the levels in a way to get the results I wanted. I would agree that using the scanner presets is digging potatoes with a rocket launcher, but I’m getting the potatoes I want as a result, so I’m fine with it for now.
Thanks again for explaining more.
By the way, I ran into this page as a result of a link from Twitter by John Allison of scarygoround.com
Well, I think the first rule is that if you end up with potatoes, you’ve done it right!
That John Allison is a good-un!
Really interesting Dan!
I have a question - I know you’re the guru of pens and not necessarily pencils, but those it’s about those ENO pencils. They’ve actually stopped production of that particular pencil so it’ll soon be difficult to get hold of them and the lead. I like them because the lead’s soft and very easy to work with, so I’m bricking it thinking they’ll be gone soon. 🙁 Have you worked with any other type of mechanical pencil that has the same sort of lead feel?
Really enjoy Oxford Clay, btw. 😀
Hi Steph,
I’ve not come across anything quite as nice yet. The ENO pencils do have really great lead, but I haven’t found a replacement yet. I’ve got a couple of Chromacolour Col-Erase pencils that are really nice, but I tend not to use them much because I am lazy and don’t like having to sharpen them all the time.
I know that you can still get the ENO leads from some places online, but if I find a suitable replacement, I’ll let you know!
Thanks - Dan
Hi Dan -
Great post - thanks very much. I have two (very boring) photoshop questions for you. When you are filling with colours do you use the paintbucket? I find that using a fill tends to encroach on my line work, but equally decreasing the tolerance means I’m left with little white patches in certain areas. I wondered if you had any advice?
Also - is there anyway to select the black line work so that you can make it a layer?
Thanks so much!
Hi Becky,
I try to avoid using the paint bucket where I can to be honest.
I described how to isolate the black lines on a layer by themselves in an earlier comment. With the black lines isolated, I work in a few ways; on a layer underneath, I use the polygonal lasso tool to select the rough shape of the element I want to colour, fill it with my chosen colour and then use the eraser tool with my Wacom to erase what I don’t want. That’s way One. Way Two is good ol’ fashioned colouring in with the wacom. Way Three is tricky and rarely works properly. If I’ve dealing with closed loops, I sometimes (but not often at all) use the magic wand to select the part I would like to colour. I then modify the selection, growing it by a pixel or two, switch to a new layer underneath my line work, then fill it with colour. This is a messy way to do it and should be avoided if possible if you have any kind of daintiness in your lines.
Any of these ways gets rid of the unsightly white bits, but muck about with it and see what you can do. The joy of photoshop is that if you don’t like it, you can undo it!