Chewing Pencils

Over the last ten years, my computer has become the chief tool I use for producing my cartoons and illustrations. My first few paying jobs were done before I owned a computer and were finished the ‘old fashioned’ way - by drawing a pencil draft on paper, inking with a marker pen or brush, colouring with a variety of media, then mounting the work on some board, and finally delivering the work by hand or post.

But when I purchased my first computer, I realised that not only could I make production and delivery of my work more efficient, I could also dramatically increase the quality of it too.

The purpose of this tutorial is to walk you through some basic techniques for producing a cartoon using a mix of traditional media and your computer to get the best possible results. I will be drawing a draft in pencil, inking with pen, then scanning the image before finally adding colour and some other elements digitally.

I’ve used two main methods of producing cartoons this way. The first is simply replacing the traditional method with the computer - using a flat image and adding colour with either the paint bucket tool or the drawing tool in my software. This is the method I will outline in part 2.

The second, and better, method is to use objects or layers in a way that allows different elements in your cartoon to be edited on their own without affecting the rest of the picture. For instance, colour can be added without affecting (ie going over) the black line work in your image. Adding shading, tints and highlights becomes a breeze and the overall result is far better. This method will be covered in part 3.

Both methods have their positives and negatives, and they both have an infinite number of variations that have been honed by individual artists over the years. However, this is what I have found has worked for me.

To begin, though, we need to produce and image on paper and scan it! Here is the raw scan of what I will be working with during this tutorial:

I’m using an Arttec Fineliner Pad which is bleedproof and non-feathering. It’s quite thick and very smooth and I’ve found that using this instead of your normal Reflex type photocopy paper has meant my scanned images are much cleaner. It’s also on the expensive side ($20 for 50 sheets) but those little jagged edges caused by spreading ink are non-existent.

My pencil draft was drawn with your average 2B pencil, then inked with an Artline 0.2mm Fineliner. This is a water-based pen and gives a nice, crisp line and even colour. I’ve experimented with lots of pens and this just happens to be the one I’m using at the moment!

I don’t erase any of the pencil lines because the ink takes ages to dry properly on this paper. Even though it might appear touch dry, the abrasive nature of an eraser can peel of the skin and smudge the wet ink underneath (see the pencil in the guys right hand). Besides, with a little manipulation on the computer, the lines disappear anyway.

Once drawn, I then scan the image. I use a CanoScan LiDE 20 A4 flatbed scanner which has always worked for me perfectly. It’s a couple of years old now, but still works fine for what I need it for. I scan from within my Corel PHOTOPAINT X3 software using the ‘acquire image’ option. The settings I use are as follows:

Greyscale - capturing in this mode helps me get the blacks, black and the whites, white a little further down the track.

600dpi resolution - this is usually more than any client will need and far higher than the 72dpi needed for web graphics. When using bitmap images though, it is better to work with a higher resolution and reduce it at the end rather than get to the finish and find you have to enlarge your work and compromise the result. Put simply, bitmaps don’t enlarge well.

Full Page - I generally scan the full page so I can add other things later if I need to. This is just personal preference, and I generally end up croping the image down anyway!

Once the image is captured, I save it immediately! I use the native format of my software (CPT) and then can relax a little knowing that I have at least reached the first milestone in coverting my image to digital format.

The next steps are to clean up the image and make it suitable for more detailed manipulation. I take my raw image and adjust the contrast to 100%, the brightness to -10 and the intensity to +10. I always set the contrast to 100% but the other two settings I play around with depending on the paper and pens I use. What I am after is the blackest black I can achieve at the same time as the whitest white. The added bonus is that these settings make 99% of the grey pencil lines from my draft disappear.

I then simply use the eraser tool to fix any mistakes (see the left hand above) and remove any lingering pencil lines. The cartoon at this stage looks like this:

The image is now ready for some more serious treatment. In the part 2 of this tutorial I will colour my cartoon by treating it as a flat image and use only the ’paint brush’ and ‘fill bucket’ tools. In part 3 I will use objects and layers.

Note: This post, and parts two & three, form part of the group writing project over at ProBlogger. If you’ve got a tutorial or ‘how to’ post your about to write, visit ProBlogger and add your link to the list. There’s some great prizes/gifts on offer!