Chewing Pencils

Way back in this post, I outlined the process I use to draw, scan and colour a cartoon on the computer. Scanning is something I do very rarely as I usually draw directly onto the computer using a wacom tablet, however, when something is particularly detailed or difficult to draw, I’ll still get out a pencil and paper and do a draft copy first. Of course, when it comes to the inking stage, it all gets very ugly (see this post).

Anyway, in recent months I decided to start experimenting with a new combination of software packages to produce my work. This has meant that occasionally I’ve had to do some drafts to get the results I’m after, but instead of using traditional inking methods, I decided to apply ‘digital ink’ over a pencil draft and see what happened. 

Early on in Chewing Pencils history, I wrote about my brief dabbling with Corel Painter (see here) and after getting a bit bored decided to give it a decent go. So far, I’m happy with the results, so I thought I’d do an updated tutorial on how I produce my work using a combination of pencil, Corel Painter and Corel PhotoPaint.

The next big event on the calendar is Valentine’s Day, which means now is the time to start drawing and posting Valentine’s Day cartoons on your website. Here’s a draft version of my first Valentine’s Day cartoon for 2007. It’s drawn with a standard HB pencil on A4, white photocopy paper. All the other equipment I use, unless otherwise stated, is the same as in this post.

This is the raw scan of my draft, with only the contrast and brightness adjusted slightly for easy screen viewing. Like last time, I haven’t erased any of my pencil lines as they will be deleted in a future stage of the cartoon’s creation.

In the next post, I’ll outline how I ink the pencil draft using Corel Painter IX.5 and add the initial background colour using the digital watercolour brush.