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Inkthinker — Digital sketch 003
Published: 2007-06-13 04:14:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 3574; Favourites: 30; Downloads: 62
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Description
Digital doodles that occasionally end up in the margins of my work, collected for your bemusement.Nothing particularly special going on, I just sometimes get an idea or something and it's occasionally worth it to lay down a rough in the corner and then move on.
All left at actual size, drawn in Photoshop.
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Comments: 22
Very nice work. I am trying to learn control so I can sketch and doodle with my Wacom Bamboo tablet. I got the bottom of the line because it was pretty much what I could aford and so far it's been fun, but I'm fumbling with brush settings and none of my digital doodles come out like my pencil ones. Any pointers?
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Well, for one thing it's a totally different tool than pencils and paper, so there's not really an equivalency... your digital doodles won't come out like your pencil ones, 'for the same reasons your doodles with ballpoint pens or crayons or bloody fingers won't.
I find I work a lot messier in the preliminary stages than I ever did when using pencils, because the consequences of the mess don't necessarily relate to the final results... I'm not concerned about eraser smudge or tearing, etc, so I'm a lot more free about scribbling and roughing and erasing than I used to be. I just do all of that sketch work on a separate Layer from the final lines, and turn it all off when I don't need it anymore.
When cleaning up the sketches, I find the trick to getting a right, smooth line is to zoom in and work close. It helps to remember that the software is translating a movement of a couple inches (on the tablet) to a line that might be several inches long depending on the size of your canvas. One thing you can do to smooth out the action is to push in close so that the translation of tablet input is closer to a 1:1 ratio. I quite often work at about 300% zoom when putting down clean lines in Photoshop using a thin brush like a 4 or 6px round... if I work farther back I tend to get trembles and rubberbanding in the lines.
I hope that helps some. Digital drawing shares a lot of technique with traditional forms, but it has a host of its own tricks and wrinkles. It really helps to treat the tools as unique in and of themselves, rather than seeing them as approximations or imitations of physical tools.
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Haha.. awesome
I particularily like the tough guy with the arched eyebrow
And out of curiousity, are the ones at the tops aliens, or are the circles for measurement?
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The ones at the very top is a rough alien idea, yes. The four eyes is a dead giveaway.
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Yes, I'm a moderator and regular poster on the PJ forums.
So far as I know, there's only one other person using the name "inkthinker", and she's a writer... also, she's a "she". I've never spoken with her about it, but so far it hasn't become a problem.
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hahaha i see, yup you're the guy. anyway im watching your artworks xD
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hm, to the left there, it seems you just scribbled until forms began to take place. Heh, neat. I wish I could do that, but I get way too confused, particularly when doing it with pencil.
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That's not far from the truth. It is scribbling, but it's scribbling with intent.
I start with basic stick figures, then scribble out the muscle shapes and basic anatomy, then scribble out clothing drapery and details. At any point I might start up a new Layer and sketch up a cleaner base over the top of the first one, but I need that initial base to build upon.
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Hm..where'd you learn that?
If you don't mind me asking. Sounds like something I should do, cause my figures are way to stiff and uninteresting.
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Noplace in particular... it's my current technique, which built up over the last however many years. Ten years ago I tended to draw a sort of rough version of what I thought the clean, final image should look like, and then clean that up, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I realised that by doing so I was neglecting the underlying structure of the forms I was creating... as a result my drawings were plagued by skews and asymmetry and a host of anatomical proportion errors, not to mention bad composition.
So now I try to start every drawing by breaking it down to as basic as I can, shapes and space, and then I build up on that. Sort of like building a house... start with a plan (thumbnail), build a frame (rough sketch, block lighting), put on walls and a roof (cleaner sketch, rough details like clothing, accessories and such), and THEN you decorate it (clean and final lines, detail, etc.)
I think too many beginning artists start off by (to extend the metaphor) working out their wallpaper patterns before they've even figured out the floorplan.
I'll probaby end up doing something different ten years from now, when I've learned new tricks. The process never stops growing. But I know that when I figured out to start basic and build up, my work got better much faster.
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Ah, mind making a short vid clip of that process?
And thanks for the explanation, I'll try it out. It's tougher on paper, cause it gets messier for me.
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Draw the early stages with red or blue pencil, then do your cleanups with regular pencil... the red or blue can be easily stripped out digitally, leaving you with a much cleaner line.
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ah...then I'll have to buy those col-erase pencils, lol. Thanks.
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Actually, almost any brand of color pencil will do, just look for a good pure red or blue that you're comfortable with and you can read well. Personally, I dig the Ticonderoga brand of red "checking" pencils, which you can get at most office supply stores in packs of four.
The technique for removal involves getting a good, clean scan, then using Adjust Hue/Saturation to change the pixel value for Red/Magenta or Blue/Cyan, lowering the Saturation all the way and raising the Brightness. This should remove the red or blue color data from the pixels, essentially stripping out the color entirely (my technical explanation may be flawed, but the technique rocks).
You can seen an example of this in the cover I did for Kenzer & Co's Brothers By Blood, there's even a step-by-step GIF in the Scraps that shows how I drew it.
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ah I see, I'll try it out, thanks. Either that, or sketch entirely in photoshop or something, lol. Which...rarely ever turns out well.
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Great, loose stuff, Ben. Nice to see your work again.
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