Saturday, May 17, 2008

Inking and colouring


Once my drawings were laid out in pencil, I'd lay a sheet of detail paper over the top and ink directly onto that. I'd decided during the design stage that I wanted a border around the page. That would prove useful when I'd scanned the line artwork because the drawings were larger than the image area of my scanner, so they all had to be scanned in two pieces and put together in Photoshop. The borders enabled me to see the overall shape of the image, thus making the stitching together easier, and quicker. In retrospect, making the artwork fit the scanner would've made the process a little faster, but then I would've been doing my drawings at a smaller scale, which would've made the drawing process less relaxed and constrained and thus less 'free' in style.
In my first colour test, I made a conscious effort to keep the application of quite scruffy and deliberately went over the lines in places. The lines are quite hard and solid, so a certain looseness in the colour would be more fun.
One beauty in working in Photoshop for me is being able to work in layers. I kept the linework on the top layer and added colour on another. As I worked I could view the colour layer alone to confirm I was doing OK. I quite liked the look of the colour layer on it's own, but perhaps that would be something I could apply to something another time. I had no time for experimentation. After all I had thirty one illustrations to complete!

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