This week I started posting a drawing per day. The drawings are meant to tell a story. There is no dialog. Just the drawings. Although I may end up adding dialog in future drawings. I don’t know though because I haven’t planned that far ahead.
Why am I doing this?
Because I want my drawing skills to improve. I do a lot of sketching that no one ever sees so it doesn’t matter if it sucks. By putting these drawings out in front of people I care more about doing a better job. I took up drawing as a hobby recently and I’m really enjoying it. I find myself learning a lot as I do each of these drawings. Hopefully my skills will improve as I go.
What is my process for creating these drawings?
What I draw each day is very spontaneous. I have a vague idea of where I want to go with the story but I haven’t scripted it out and I certainly don’t know how its going to end. We’ll see how that works as I go.
I sketch them fairly tightly in a 5.5″ by 8.5″ Strathmore Sketch book. I use a mechanical pencil with Uni soft blue colored lead that I get from JetPens.com. This lead is perfect for me because it disappears when scanning black and white and it is very erasable. Then I ink them with Faber-Castell PITT Artist pens. I use the super fine, fine and medium tip pens. I also use a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. After inking I scan the drawing into Photoshop CS4 and do a little clean up. I use a Wacom Intuos3 6×8 tablet. I’d love to have a Cintiq some day! I then color and shade the image in Photoshop. I’ve been doing them in greyscale but would like to start using full color. Color scares me!
I need to start using larger paper. I just can’t get the detail that I want on the small sketch pad. I’ll most likely starting using 9×12 sheets soon. That small pad was just convenient since I do most of the sketching at lunch while at work.
That’s it for now. Check in tomorrow to see how the story closes out for the week and come back next week for more!
