"Your Method" How do you draw?

[Twar3Draconis]

Since we have a lot of artists on Lemma Soft, I was kind of curious on how each one of us works.

I usually work with a sketch- Either made on computer or via Colors! on the DS. Then I put that one into Photoshop, and ink it on a whole different layer. Shading begins, generally with the largest area color (read, clothing or sky), unless it's a dark color. It may be I've picked up from art classes, but I do darker colors last.

[Jake]

Sketch with big brush in Photoshop to get main shapes. I prefer Photoshop for this 'cause the hard-edged brush is incompromising and 'cause PS has good selection/manipulation tools, so if I need to resize or reposition elements it's pretty easy. Often I'll do miniature sketches in the empty space to get a quick idea of pose or layout.
Take into OpenCanvas and fill a layer with white at 80% opacity to draw over.
Use a hard-edged pen tool to ink lines. (Here I'm doing a bit of a Carla Speed McNeil pastiche, so it's a fairly large brush to imitate the brush-inking she uses.
Block out areas of colour, highlights and shadows with pen tool - because none of OC's paint tools are entirely opaque for some reason. I'll start with whatever colour is 'underneath' all the others, so I have to worry about staying within as few lines as possible at each stage, and theoretically never have to worry about gaps between one area of colour and the next that one can see the background through.
Blend the edges of the highlights and shadows with the watercolour brush tool.
Fill in other colours in a similar fashion.
Drop in a background and crop to fit. Now it looks like it belongs on Jaeger's MySpace page...

If I'm working on game sprites I'll work at a much higher resolution, be more careful with a thinner brush on the inking and do a couple of post-colouring balancing steps, maybe re-colour the lines and all, but hey - in general, like that.

[uluuu]

I start on paper, because for some reason I can't sketch with a computer, even with a tablet. I think it's trying to work at too large of a resolution. Then I scan in the sketch/drawing and then open it up in Artweaver. I make the original drawing as gigantic as my computer can stand (because for me, the thinner the lines are, the better) and ink it on a new layer, using different colors for different lines. The face gets its own layer because it's easier for me that way. Sometimes I mirror the lines and go back and correct whatever mistakes there are, but I usually, ah, "forget" that step because it's depressing. D: Then I make a new layer under the lines, and fill it with white. Thennnn I go to the lines again, and select the areas I want to be transparent and then cut them from the white layer. Then I magical wand select the white layer and make new layers for skin, hair, etc. And then I color everything in! But since I'm too lazy to be super careful about it, I usually have to go back and select little places from the lines and cut things that do not belong (like hair color all over a face or something). Then I add extra colors, like, I don't know, little bits of red on cheeks and knees and stuff, and maybe a secondary color on the hair to make it look less flat. This is usually done with an airbrush tool. Ummm. Then I shade! I select stuff with the lasso thing, making sure that it is set to be anti aliased and feathered. I usually just dodge/burn for the majority of my shading because I am lazy. And then I'm usually done.
God, that was long. Sorry.

[risingbamboobanana]

i don't have a tablet and i'm not so hot at drawing with mice, so i do everything in pencils and scan in the lines when i'm done. i don't ink very often anymore either. i usually scan at 400dpi in colour, but that's just a personal preference. then i clean the lineart, remove the alpha channel, lay the flats, and shade. if i'm having trouble with a particular spot, i shade the picture in grayscale first to get a proper idea of the lighting, etc.

i kind of have a pattern when it comes to shading; flats, then start shading in a slightly darker colour, then highlights, and i switch from light to dark and the palette gets progressively darker and lighter, respectively. oh..i should mention that i mostly go for a more "painted" look, simply because i'm no good at cel-shading.

just some things i tend NOT to use:

• soft-edged airbrush - nothing wrong with it, i just find my pictures end up looking "plasticky" if i overuse it. whether or not i use it depends on the texture of the object, but i still rarely use it anymore.
  
  shading in pure black and white - doesn't quite portray the depth that i want, the picture ends up looking flat.
  
  likewise, burning and dodging: it's a shortcut that doesn't develop your skills. so you're not really doing yourself a favour using it.
  
  smudge tool - it's too easy to abuse this tool, and if used incorrectly, it looks horrible @_@ (hides earlier pics)

i (still) use Gimp, by the way.

[Deji]

Hum... I think this thread would be more useful in Art/Music/Writting, since it's a discussion about how to produce art....


About my method to draw...

Sketch:
1- I start off with a raw, messy and barely understandable sketch of what I want, either on Photoshop or on a piece of paper.
1a- If in paper, I scan the sketch, resize it to letter size and polish it or fix it if it's too unproportionate/messy
2- I print the sketch in blue or magenta... or If I ran out of color ink, I print it in light gray, using as much of the letter sized piece of paper as I can.

Light table cleaning:
3- I flip it to the not-printed side and sketch again with a colored pencil guided by the printed sketch with the help of a light table, fixing all the anatomy problem and polishing the already messy sketch.
4- Still on the reverse side, I place a blank piece of paper on top of it and draw over the fixed sketch, polishing stuff.
5- I get rid of the printed paper and flip the newly skthed sheet to the blank side, Drawing with a 0.5 mechanical pencil the final lineart. I fail at inking, so I don't ink stuff.
5b- If the final lineart is still too messy (because I'm messy to draw), I place a new piece of paper on top of it and trace it cleaner.

Computer Cleaning:
6- I scan it at 300-360 dpi into Photoshop and adjust the Levels (Ctrl+L) to get rid of the light gray areas and the shades my crappy scanner makes and to make my lineart black.
7- Using the brush tool I use black to redraw ugly lines and to strengthen weak lines. I clean the ugly parts, eraser smudges and misplaced lines using white.
8- I "lift" the lineart to a new layer, getting rid of all the white areas. I normally set my lneart lyer to 40-50% opacity. If it's a colored lineart, I leave it at 100%

Coloring:
9- I make a new layer below my lineart and color everything with the base colors.
9a- Sometimes I make a new layer on top of everything, set it to multiply and add some strokes and stains here and there to study the light source.
10- I duplicate my color layer and do whatever kind of shading I want to do with that particular picture, using the flat base colors layer as a selection template.
11- Add several effects layer.

(if the drawing has a background other than a simple landscape with sky, trees and mountains, I do the whole process with the background separately)

And that's pretty much it.

EDIT:
Part of the process of a picture I'm currently working on:

[Ren]

Deji:that's really interesting, and similar to the method I use(although I have a glass desk for my PC, I just place my light under it...that's cheap :3 ).Also, I'm impatient to see the result!

[Jake]

Mm - thinking about it, I do a similar thing for backgrounds - sketch them in Photoshop, using straight-lines and selection transformations and several layers of guides to get the perspective and POV right, then print them out fairly dark, tape them to a drawing board, tape marker paper over the top and draw the final lines in with a mechanical pencil, then scan and colour that on the PC.

[deinarious]

It depends on whether it's on paper or my pen tablet.

If I draw on paper, I usually draw kinda either bishoujo/bishounen, or in chibi. It's hard for me to get a pose without looking at a source, so I often have book covers or magazines (or one of my friends) nearby to pose. I then draw, but never color in the original sketch or scan it.

Praying to higher powers (I am Pagan so it's "powers" not "power") often gives me momentary bursts of inspiration that allow me to make a quick sketch in less than 5 minutes.

If I'm using my pen tablet, which i rarely use since I'm not used to the stylus, my drawings are more or less sketchy and simplistic. I use either The GIMP or Corel Painter X to get the job done, and then use a filter to thicken the lines, then color it in. Below is an example of my art done on a computer, a close up of a finger.

I haven't tried the "prayer" technique yet for the pen tablet, but will soon.

[azureXtwilight]

Okay, my method is unusual.

First, I draw on a piece of paper, since I don't have a scanner, I took a photograph of it in my cellphone. Then using USB transfer it to my computer.
Then I make the lineart using coreldraw.
I color it using corel too, including the shadow part...
And then, I make the "special effects" or "background" using photoshop.
But mainly I use those backgrounds via corel.
I know this take a bit longer but at least I'm used to it XD.

[deinarious]

I used to have a scanner/printer/copier, but then my brother broke it...

I plan on getting a new one to scan my drawings.

By the way, I'm pretty good at making (very small) sprites in 256 colors using a program called iDraw. I used to use it for RM2k character sets...

Admittedly it was mainly nude recolors, but then again, I was a freakin' teenager at the time and I was obsessed with the female body. Have been since age 9 or 10. Have a book of my artistic nudes from age 11 believe it or not that were pretty detailed. Used to draw pretty damn well.

Now I'm rusty >.< I need to practice on my computer.

[4394]

I use Easy Paint Tool SAI. Um, I don't really have a technique... when it comes to characters, I sketch the base body in light blue or pink, add in clothes/hair/facial features on separate layers in different colours, then merge it all once I'm satisfied. Then I blow up the image by 200%, raise the lightness of the merged sketch, and ink on another layer. Once that's done, I start with the colours.

No magic, really. *grin*

[luminarious]

It's somewhat interesting to note that an overwhelming mayority of manga-style artists use the digital version of the traditional sketch->ink->colour process. Is the more painterly approach of blocking shapes and then refining details bit-by-bit really too time-consuming for anyone to even attempt? Personally, I don't think it is.. I have seen a lot more manga tutorials than painting ones though.

[Jake]

It's somewhat interesting to note that an overwhelming mayority of manga-style artists use the digital version of the traditional sketch->ink->colour process. Is the more painterly approach of blocking shapes and then refining details bit-by-bit really too time-consuming for anyone to even attempt? Personally, I don't think it is.. I have seen a lot more manga tutorials than painting ones though.

For a lot of people, it's not that it's too time-consuming but that it's too overwhelming. Instead of being able to work over a iteratively-improved sketch, you have to block out whole areas of colour in flat at once, which means you have to have a much better visualisation of the final piece while you're working, you can't rely on the previously-defined lines.

That, and of course that most people learn to draw or paint by imitating artists they admire; if all the artists you admire are doing lined ink work then why not start from a sketch?

[DaFool]

Had to start using 3D for backgrounds in my major current project. Also, I compiled the faces and hairpieces and made a 'parts bin' for it. Stopped sketching for some time, so everything is digital... after the general outline, in come the 'parts bin' components, and coloring is via bucket-filling magic-wanded areas. Otherwise no way I would be able to complete the 100+ CG and BG requirements. I'm already 50% done with the art doing it this way.

Going all-digital is key. This shows why many artists can barely get past the 'concept sketch' phase to 'production phase'. Better create a set of digital partial drawings and create a 'parts bin' for it. If hand-sketching everything first is a must, you might as well contract the IB department in some animation studio in a 3rd world country.