Ditch the Draft
Published by Matt Glover November 19th, 2006 in How to Draw
One of the things that I have found to enhance my style was to do away with the concept of producing a draft version of my cartoons.
Let me say upfront that I do still mess around with different concepts on a sketch pad. But it is now a rare thing for me to produce a pencil draft that I then ink and colour. Instead, I skip the draft stage and go straight for the finished thing.
The main reason I took this step was fairly simple - my finished artwork sucked! While my drafts always seemed to have a free and flowing style, my final inked versions seemed to loose something. They were bland and boring and seemed far to calculated.
Perhaps this was a symptom of being a perfectionist. I wanted to reproduce exactly what I had done in my draft and hence used slow, deliberate lines that lacked the variation and flare of the quick pencil strokes. A brush was far too uncontrollable for my liking, so the simple fine-liner was the tool of choice. The finished product was always acceptable and usually sold well, but I could never get past feeling a little disappointed that the final piece wasn’t what I was really hoping for.
Then I started producing my work using a drawing tablet and computer.
This meant that I could, technically, still draw a pencil draft, scan it in and ‘ink’ it on the computer. But the restraints of getting the lines “just right” were still there. It wasn’t until I discovered the power of the ‘undo’ function that things really started to change.
I could draw a line and if it wasn’t right, simply undo it and draw it again. And again. And again if necessary. Nothing was spoilt and nothing was wasted. With the pressure and velocity settings of my tablet adjusted to my drawing style, I was able to produce great looking work in a fraction of the time, in a format ready to send directly to a client.
It wasn’t too long before I realized that the results I was getting were making the need for a draft redundant. I could mess around with a work in progress - cut, paste, rearrange, undo - and turn a digital draft into a finished piece just by clicking ’save as’.
Today, that’s how I work 99% of the time. The only occasion I do a pencil draft now is if there is something that requires a lot of detail - but with a simple style, this is a rare thing. I’m far happier with the results I’m getting, and I think it’s actually improving my drawing too!
So, if you’re finding the whole draft/inking process a bit of a chore, try going directly to the finished product and see what happens!
This tip is so true. . . And the timing is perfect for me.
I did my first weekly comic strip last Saturday and had trouble finalizing a clean large version to scan because I kept liking the original thumbnail sketches better!
From now on I think I’ll be sketching one large draft and finish it the computer like you suggest. If nothing else, it’ll take fewer hours to finish.
I remember seeing (I think) Ralph Steadman on TV, showing how he does his cartoons. He insisted that he NEVER did a draft drawing. All his artwork was done with a dip pen, straight onto the paper. Amazing considering how detailed his cartoons are!
Currently I do both. For some drawings, it’s straight onto paper - but for the detailed drawings I use a rough pencil line first.
I try to do the pencil line as rough as possible, sometimes just basic outlines so I can work out where everything will go. Then I can concentrate on the detail in ink.
Doing a detailed pencil drawing, and then inking it in, means you’re doing the drawing twice - which is quite boring.
I’ve got a small tablet - but I’ve found it very difficult to use. I’m not sure if this is because it’s the A6 version - but I just cannot replicate my style of drawing with it. Drawing directly on the computer is totally alien for me. Maybe I’m just used to ink and paper too much.