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[ (05/29/2025) Number 89 in the 'over 2000 views club']
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And now a meeting of the minds ensues. Nei'chelle is now waiting for Genevieve to show up, and the sudden BTTF-style departure of Tali's chosen conveyance has caught her attention, leading her to notice Gen standing at the gate watching the bus zip off (she wasn't told that this is the address). Spotting the portfolio, beret and pencil tucked behind the ear, Nei'chelle correctly makes the connection that this is the artist she's waiting for. Calling out, she gets Gen's attention and invites her in under the picnic-table umbrella for an introduction. Don't worry--they'll be headed inside soon enough to take a tour of that portfolio as they discuss the specifics of the pic she wants done.
Technical:
I didn't get to mention another brush effect that took a considerable amount of time off the coloring of this pic. The hedges in the background were always going to be an issue with their multitude of small leaves. Fortunately I found one of CSP's included brushes provided enough small texture to mimic the appearance of shrubbery if you don't look too close. using the [Airbrush] sub-tool [Running color spray] I made most of the shadowed and highlighted areas using the base flat color over layers set respectively to Multiply and Screen, concentrating the highlights near the top of the hedge to suggest a flat top.
Another effect I achieved was the trees in the rain-obscured backdrop of the bottom panel. After some experimentation I successfully conveyed their indistinct appearance using one of the oil-paint brushes and appropriately tone-shifted hues of green and greenish-blue. Another detail I added in conjunction with this is the contrasting look of water streaming off the sides of the umbrella, gathering and dripping off the low points of its wavy skirt.
The cloudy sky was an effect I learned way back in 2015's No Joy in Mudville. Using the shadow layer (set to Multiply) I airbrushed a random pattern of dark cloud bottoms over the flat gray sky, then switched to the highlight layer (set to Screen) to airbrush the light areas between them, representing daylight lighting up the less-dense areas between the most rain-laden clouds. To finish off the effect, I went back to the shadow layer and airbrushed a darker shade of grey to make the flat cloud bottoms look especially laden with rain. Sort of inverse of painting mud, and with a lot less detail.
I'm hoping the next installment of this comic takes a little less time to color. Even though it's four pages, it takes place indoors and was already inked in 2019. It was initially done on paper, so there may be some tweaking in store once I get a close look at it.
Digital drawing done in Clip Studio Paint EX. 24 layers including text objects. 30MB .CLIP file. Project ID# 261 (60-5) (Pg#90)
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>
And now a meeting of the minds ensues. Nei'chelle is now waiting for Genevieve to show up, and the sudden BTTF-style departure of Tali's chosen conveyance has caught her attention, leading her to notice Gen standing at the gate watching the bus zip off (she wasn't told that this is the address). Spotting the portfolio, beret and pencil tucked behind the ear, Nei'chelle correctly makes the connection that this is the artist she's waiting for. Calling out, she gets Gen's attention and invites her in under the picnic-table umbrella for an introduction. Don't worry--they'll be headed inside soon enough to take a tour of that portfolio as they discuss the specifics of the pic she wants done.
Technical:
I didn't get to mention another brush effect that took a considerable amount of time off the coloring of this pic. The hedges in the background were always going to be an issue with their multitude of small leaves. Fortunately I found one of CSP's included brushes provided enough small texture to mimic the appearance of shrubbery if you don't look too close. using the [Airbrush] sub-tool [Running color spray] I made most of the shadowed and highlighted areas using the base flat color over layers set respectively to Multiply and Screen, concentrating the highlights near the top of the hedge to suggest a flat top.
Another effect I achieved was the trees in the rain-obscured backdrop of the bottom panel. After some experimentation I successfully conveyed their indistinct appearance using one of the oil-paint brushes and appropriately tone-shifted hues of green and greenish-blue. Another detail I added in conjunction with this is the contrasting look of water streaming off the sides of the umbrella, gathering and dripping off the low points of its wavy skirt.
The cloudy sky was an effect I learned way back in 2015's No Joy in Mudville. Using the shadow layer (set to Multiply) I airbrushed a random pattern of dark cloud bottoms over the flat gray sky, then switched to the highlight layer (set to Screen) to airbrush the light areas between them, representing daylight lighting up the less-dense areas between the most rain-laden clouds. To finish off the effect, I went back to the shadow layer and airbrushed a darker shade of grey to make the flat cloud bottoms look especially laden with rain. Sort of inverse of painting mud, and with a lot less detail.
I'm hoping the next installment of this comic takes a little less time to color. Even though it's four pages, it takes place indoors and was already inked in 2019. It was initially done on paper, so there may be some tweaking in store once I get a close look at it.
Digital drawing done in Clip Studio Paint EX. 24 layers including text objects. 30MB .CLIP file. Project ID# 261 (60-5) (Pg#90)
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Category Artwork (Digital) / Comics
Species Skunk
Size 950 x 1279px
File Size 216.6 kB
Listed in Folders
Well, even though I've been using graphics tablets since Windows 3.1 was relevant, I've only been drawing digitally for the last four years or so. If you look through my gallery and pick out random submissions on each page, at the end of each description I identify the medium used. You'll see for a long time I drew stuff on paper, usually inked it there, then scanned it and colored it.
Before that, I used the tablet as a substitute mouse. Before I got my own space, my first PC's were 486 laptops that I had to keep situated at one end of the dining room table, and needing to keep that arrangement as compact as possible (I had zip and Jaz drives, with a scanner off to the side), adopted a graphics tablet as a pointing device, as it was mapped to the screen and I could reach all corners using just a 4x6" space. All that time the only actual graphics use was flood filling and touching up scanned drawings that were penciled+inked on paper. Years later I dipped a toe into digital inking when I discovered Inkscape (a free/open source vector-drawing program) to do the inks over scanned pencils, which I then exported a bitmap and colored that digitally, again by magic-wanding inside the lines and flood filling. When I started doing artist alley at cons I would perform touch up and fixes on scanned pencils/inks using the tablet, and by that time all the pointing/clicking I was doing in Windows, plus digital coloring, gave me the ability to do progressively more extensive edits to scans, eventually allowing me to switch to digital inking in my main drawing application (at the time, https;//krita.org (also free/open source), which in turn was my "wax-on, wax-off" regimen that allowed me to move into drawing the whole pic from start to finish in digital with a shorter than normal adjustment period (see the pics I titled "digtal drawing practice" between 2015-2017-- I appear to have done 3-5 of those before deciding to quit calling them 'practice' and just draw subsequent pics 100% on the tablet).
Digital gives you one very helpful shortcut beyond the 'undo' button. Virtually all digital drawing apps have the use of layers, which I'm sure you've used in some of your colorized pencil art (ex: 'Brushing up for Bedtime', 'Bathroom Floor', 'Slide [reboot] '). The 'hidden' shortcut is that it's not necessary to extensively clean up your initial pencil sketch--you simply throw another layer over it and trace out the good parts, which become your actual pencils. You might endure a period of simplified coloring for a while as you get a handle on inking (which may or may not be an obstacle), but eventually you'll be able to replicate your signature real-media pencil shading in digital (if that's what you'd aim for--at that point you might be emboldened to try cell shaded color, colored lineart, soft-edged (airbrush) shading and even digital paint).
So, all this bloviating is really just saying that it isn't too late to take a whack at digital drawing. It's not even necessary to splurge on a pricey screen tablet right out of the gate if that's out of your budget (I've never used one, only faffed around with two touchscreen laptops that came with a stylus, but never completed any art with either one)--the hand-eye co-ordination that develops just by using it as a mouse (all tablets work this way) will help with the 'drawing somewhere you're not looking' thing when you're ready to start sketching with it.
Something to think about :)
Before that, I used the tablet as a substitute mouse. Before I got my own space, my first PC's were 486 laptops that I had to keep situated at one end of the dining room table, and needing to keep that arrangement as compact as possible (I had zip and Jaz drives, with a scanner off to the side), adopted a graphics tablet as a pointing device, as it was mapped to the screen and I could reach all corners using just a 4x6" space. All that time the only actual graphics use was flood filling and touching up scanned drawings that were penciled+inked on paper. Years later I dipped a toe into digital inking when I discovered Inkscape (a free/open source vector-drawing program) to do the inks over scanned pencils, which I then exported a bitmap and colored that digitally, again by magic-wanding inside the lines and flood filling. When I started doing artist alley at cons I would perform touch up and fixes on scanned pencils/inks using the tablet, and by that time all the pointing/clicking I was doing in Windows, plus digital coloring, gave me the ability to do progressively more extensive edits to scans, eventually allowing me to switch to digital inking in my main drawing application (at the time, https;//krita.org (also free/open source), which in turn was my "wax-on, wax-off" regimen that allowed me to move into drawing the whole pic from start to finish in digital with a shorter than normal adjustment period (see the pics I titled "digtal drawing practice" between 2015-2017-- I appear to have done 3-5 of those before deciding to quit calling them 'practice' and just draw subsequent pics 100% on the tablet).
Digital gives you one very helpful shortcut beyond the 'undo' button. Virtually all digital drawing apps have the use of layers, which I'm sure you've used in some of your colorized pencil art (ex: 'Brushing up for Bedtime', 'Bathroom Floor', 'Slide [reboot] '). The 'hidden' shortcut is that it's not necessary to extensively clean up your initial pencil sketch--you simply throw another layer over it and trace out the good parts, which become your actual pencils. You might endure a period of simplified coloring for a while as you get a handle on inking (which may or may not be an obstacle), but eventually you'll be able to replicate your signature real-media pencil shading in digital (if that's what you'd aim for--at that point you might be emboldened to try cell shaded color, colored lineart, soft-edged (airbrush) shading and even digital paint).
So, all this bloviating is really just saying that it isn't too late to take a whack at digital drawing. It's not even necessary to splurge on a pricey screen tablet right out of the gate if that's out of your budget (I've never used one, only faffed around with two touchscreen laptops that came with a stylus, but never completed any art with either one)--the hand-eye co-ordination that develops just by using it as a mouse (all tablets work this way) will help with the 'drawing somewhere you're not looking' thing when you're ready to start sketching with it.
Something to think about :)
Which program do you use?
Think of layers like animation cels with some added features. Here's some basic demonstration of how they work across a wide variety of drawing applications.
https://youtu.be/6fNFNGAHOFs
and
https://youtu.be/lif09FYE-zU
They come in useful for inking pencil sketches or colorizing them without affecting the original. For example in your pic "Meeting Miles", they would allow you to paint the shrubbery behind the fence (or anything else on that pic) without leaving flecks of white showing through, or altering any of the existing pencil-work.
Think of layers like animation cels with some added features. Here's some basic demonstration of how they work across a wide variety of drawing applications.
https://youtu.be/6fNFNGAHOFs
and
https://youtu.be/lif09FYE-zU
They come in useful for inking pencil sketches or colorizing them without affecting the original. For example in your pic "Meeting Miles", they would allow you to paint the shrubbery behind the fence (or anything else on that pic) without leaving flecks of white showing through, or altering any of the existing pencil-work.
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