Chewing Pencils

Fellow Aussie cartoonist Mick Ward sent this to Chewing Pencils:

I have been casually drawing cartoons for as long as I remember and finally at the age of 35 with family of three young children, would you believe I think now is the time to ramp things up and get some work. I’ve been offered some projects over the last few years but before I get into it further one thing is bothering me.

How do we best create those variable lines that even you seem to nail, those thin lines that gradually run thick and give characters a more three dimensional look!? I’ve been using a simple black unipin pen (pigment ink) or a Micron (similar) but by doing this I have to go over my pictures a few times in those places I want to get those varying lines. I guess the next step is trying ink but my concern with that is they seem less forgiving if an error occurs (I can be a perfectionist which doesn’t help!) and I am at a loss for what ink is best what cartridge paper or alternative to use etc etc…

This very question has been something that bothered me for ages. Most of the artwork of cartoonists I really admired had a variation in line thickness and opacity that seemed to make characters jump out from the page. Yet, when I put pen to paper my characters looked, well, flat.

So I asked around and badgered some of the ‘names’ in the industry to try and find out more. What I discovered was that nearly all of them used a brush and ink. They said that the flexibility of the brush and the flow of the ink gave just the right feel that helped them produce their best work each time.

This presented me with a problem.

I know there is some technical, medical name for it, but basically my hands shake. I can’t keep them steady at all, so when I try to draw a line it looks like the output from one of those machines that measures earthquakes. I could get away with reducing large scale drawing done by pen on paper, but using a brush was never going to happen.

I tried brush pens with a little success, but more often than not, ended up with more marks on my fingers than on the paper. But when I went digital, things started to look up.

Most of my drawings are now produced using a pressure sensitive drawing tablet and a combination of Corel’s Painter IX and PhotoPaint software. Both pieces of software allow me to set the pressure, velocity and opacity levels that suit the way I work. Now I ‘brush’ away knowing that I can undo mistakes with a key stroke and build up images using multiple layers and objects. I still do some work with a pen and paper - see this series of posts for example - but never get the same sort of line variation when I do.

The question of “when do you draw thick?” doesn’t seem to have any sort of technical answer. Obviously, when you want something to stand out from the background, you draw the linework a bit stronger and bolder, but other than that, there are no rules. What I try to do is make curves a bit thicker than straight lines and have all lines thicker in the middle than the beginning and end. My software settings make these differences very subtle, but it seems to be enough to produce the effect I’m after - as long as I remember to press a bit harder with the stylus in the right place!

Back in this post I talk briefly about some of the info available on Tom Richmond’s blog. He has a great inking tutorial and talks about the variation in line thickness he uses, as well as his tools of the trade. Interestingly, he says that he doesn’t really have any hard and fast rules, and leaves any mistakes in place for added interest! His theory is that any variation in the line work adds depth to a cartoon, so just add it in somewhere!