Updating Old Work

This year has been pretty busy. I know I haven't been around for a while, but never fear, I am still here. Recently I was at Salt Lake Comic Con and I was flipping through my old portfolio. It is sadly in need of updating as a lot of the artwork I'd made was about 10 years old.

Some of the artwork I look at and cringe...I'm so much better at drawing than I was 10 years ago! (A big reason to keep a portfolio is to remind yourself how much you've improved over time).

Other artwork I looked at and decided it just needed coloring touched up, since I colored many of the pictures during conventions, with limited supplies, or while I was talking to others. And, my coloring has improved a lot in the last 10 years.

Redrawing & coloring old artwork
This first piece is one I originally drew about 12 years ago. Apparently when I was at a demo I only used 14 colors the first time. I've always liked this spunky fairy, so in flipping through my portfolio this weekend I figured now was the time to update her.

First, I traced her outline onto a clean sheet of our sketchbook paper using a brown multiliner 0.3mm. I have also changed my style of drawing a bit over the years, so I cleaned up my line work a little. Sometimes, just redrawing something you made previously makes all the difference in changing something from good to great.

I colored this version with way more than 14 colors! B00, BG000, YG11, Y000, E000, BV11 are the main colors used throughout, then I enhanced each area.

The wings are colored with B00, BG000, YG11, Y000, and a glitter pen (you can't see it but it sparkles). I used the colorless blender to lighten up the transparent areas that show the shirt and arm through.

The purple areas are colored with BV11, B66, and BV17, with highlights of B00 and Y000 (Heck, I used highlights of Y000 and B00 throughout all areas of the picture). Green things are colored with YG11, YG13, G02, YG17, Y000 and B00.

I used a few different earth tone families. E40's for the sack and base coat on the staff. The skin is colored with E0000, E11, BV11, E13, E15, B00, Y000. The shoes and wrist cuffs are in the E30's family, with the B00 and Y000 thrown in for good measure.

I'm excited! This came out so much cleaner, crisper, than the one I made 12 years ago. Now, at least one page in my portfolio is updated (only like 30 more images that bug me to go!). Doing this exercise really helped me see just how much I have improved in that time, so I strongly encourage you to also go through and re-color something you made a long time ago.

Ok, I'll share another updated artwork soon!

Cross Hatching part 2 - Basic Technique

First of all, I want to congratulate all of you who thought about my challenge and are going to step up this year to making your own doodles. Doodling is a very key ingredient to even the largest, most complex works of art. Before I get into cross hatching some more I have a little business to cover.

Copic Certification, Anaheim
I am opening my class on Friday, Jan 23 up to the general public. Anyone who can come is welcome for the 23 only. Cost is $120 but you get about $80 worth of product to keep, so it ends up being a really great deal for an all-day class. Send an e-mail to Kris at orders@copicmarker.com or call her at 866-662-6742 to register. There are only a few spaces, so call right away.

Applications for Spring East Coast Venues will be going out next week, so get on our mailing list today! This includes Florida, New Orleans, and any confirmed locations that SallyLynn will be teaching on the East Coast thru March.

Tonite I will be giving a free lecture at 6:30 at the Eugene Public Library on the History of Manga and Manga trends in America. This is appropriate for teens or adults. I want to thank all the people who attended my teen workshop on drawing Manga earlier this week. The class was very full and very fun! I'll probably be teaching some more local classes this term, so look for Fine Art/Architecture workshops through DIVA and maybe another teen Manga class during school vacations at the Library.

Now, let's start the New Year by stepping out of your comfort zone and drawing something yourself- simple cross hatching.

Cross Hatching Basics
In my post a few days ago I talked about what cross hatching is and what it is trying to accomplish, today I'd like to get into technique. Cross hatching is both very simple and very tricky at the same time. The idea is easy, you draw lines and they make something look shadowed. The tricky part is practicing to keep a steady hand.

Drawing short lines will be easiest at first. Don't worry about making all the lines perfect, that will come with practice. Practice by doodling on anything handy. This is an exercize, not life or death, so relax and know that it's OK to make mistakes as you learn.

First, find an angle for your artwork that feels natural. For me, I am right handed and feel most comfortable making strokes that are straight out from mu chest, but with a slight right slant (1). To get another angle to my hatching I need to turn my paper so the lines I draw will be facing that same comfortable direction (2). Then, you need to practice, practice, practice. Try drawing lots of little areas that are cross hatched. You can do this with a mechanical pencil, you can do it with a cheap ballpoint pen, whatever you have handy, just try drawing hatching marks.

2 Layer Cross Hatching Technique
You need to practice putting marks that line up. It is easier to make the edge that you start from even, and let your pen gradually lift up at the end of the stroke. Turn your paper so that when you are adding the marks, the crisp edge feels natural to your hand and you work from the edge, out.

When you come back in to add the second layer of hatching, also work from the starting edge out, or it looks a little strange. Notice my example. The trailing edges meet up nicely and look smooth. The second example looks strange because one trailing edge fades, but the other is crisp. If I were filling in an area between two outside lines this wouldn't matter as much, but on an open area it doesn't work.

Practice until you can confidently add hatching that meets up with a line. Soon you'll be adding hatch marks to all sorts of things (squares on reports, lines on your notepad). This sort of doodle practice is very important to build relaxed, natural hand-eye coordination. NO STRESS! Why should you draw and doodle if it's going to be stressful? relax.

Inking Pen Hatch Marks
I'm usually making cross hatching on artwork that needs to be scanned in, so I tend to work with 0.1 or 0.05 mm multiliners. I made the mistake once of doing a large, beautiful, very detailed illustration with cross hatching in a 0.03 mm pen. When I scanned it in, the hatching was too fine for my scanner to pick up, particularly since I had to shrink the final artwork. All my hard work cross hatching was wasted! Now I draw slightly thicker and not quite so detailed.

As you can see from these examples, there are lots of looks you can get from each pen size. When I draw, I work with a couple sheets of paper under my work at any time. This gives me a slight cushion so that I can push harder to get thicker or thinner lines from the same pen. On fine sizes like the 0.03 or 0.05mm pen, I would NOT push hard however. Those tips are sturdy for what they are, but they require a very light hand. Most people can get fine enough lines with a 0.1 or 0.2 mm inking pen.

Look at how much thicker the 0.35 looks when compared to the 0.03 pen. The 1.0 pen looks really clunky and thick next to the finer sizes. I would probably not use the 1.0 by itself for hatching unless I were working on something very large and not too detailed. If you look back at the examples of the different pen sizes you'll see how layering once, twice, and a third time gives you progressively darker tones.

You can always layer different pen sizes to get even darker tones. Here is an example of regular cross-hatching, with a 1.0 pen thrown in to really darken up the final edge area. It doesn't look so clunky when layered like this, unlike when it is used by itself. The circle really looks dimensional and shadowed now.

For my final example today I've taken a simple chair from Lockhart Stamp Company and I want it to look like it came straight out of my old Alice in Wonderland book. It's so easy to make this chair look more detailed than it really is. I know that if I make a mistake I can always stamp it again.

I'm using a really fine 0.05 mm pen because the picture is so small, but you could probably use a 0.1 or 0.2 mm pen and it would still look OK. I start with the first level of shadow in the areas I know will be darkest, then I come back with a second level.


Now my chair looks like an antique illustration from around 1900, not just a nice garden chair. I know Karen won't mind if Alice comes and sits in this beautiful vinatge chair. Look at your own image collection and see which ones would look cool turned into vintage drawings simply by adding a few lines.

Cross Hatching part 1 - Multiliners & Pen Sizes

Today I'm teaching a free workshop on drawing Manga to teens at our local Library from 2 to 4. It's been a while since I last taught a Manga workshop, probably this summer was the last time. I used to teach up to 5 different workshops a week in drawing everything from Manga to Comic accessories, 6-10 yr. old drawing classes, storyboarding, and even Photoshop. I really miss teaching everyday, I guess my blog is the best outlet for the craving to teach.

Meanwhile, in honor of the Manga class here is the first part of a discussion on line thickness and "hatching" or "cross-hatching".

Changing your lines from thick to thin
Copic makes a whole pile of inking pens that work beautifully for basic line illustrations. Between the disposable Multiliner and the refillable Multiliner SP there are 14 unique pen tips:
0.03 , 0.05 , 0.1 , 0.2 , 0.25 , 0.3 , 0.35 , 0.5 , 0.7 , 0.8 , 1.0 , Brush Small*, Brush Medium
*note: the BS tip is slightly different between the two pen styles

Then there are the F01 and F02* disposable fountain pens
*F02 is a new style coming out in 2009.

As you can see, among the Copic products there are bound to be a few good inking pens for your illustration work. I strongly suggest that you either get a full set or pick 3 to 4 pens in a good range of sizes so you can have the most flexibility in illustrating (papercrafters should also keep a good range to touch-up their lines and for journaling).

Why would you need more than one pen size?
If you had asked me 15 years ago I would have said "you don't". 15 years ago my high-quality inking pen choice was a black, fine ball-point pen that came in a 2-pack at the local K-mart for $1.50. That was big money, and I was forever riding my bike down to pick up a few more inking pens since they would run out so quickly (I drew a LOT). Today I tell you otherwise, since I have learned the reason after many years of practice.

My second year in college I was introduced to Copic. From then on, I never went anywhere without a set of the disposable multiliners. I can't tell you how many BM and BS pens I went through since they put so much ink on a page, however, my other pen sizes seemed to last much longer. I did a lot of hand-drawn animation and I had to keep all my line sizes consistent so I usually would stick to a standard 1.0 or 0.8mm since those looked good on our old animation equipment.

The more I got into drawing comics though, the more I needed varying line widths to make my artwork interesting. Thick and thin lines accomplish a many things, but the basics are:

1. Varying line widths give the illusion of dimension. A simple circle becomes a ball by making one side of the line thicker.

2. Varied line widths give the illusion of weight. An object becomes grounded or heavier when you have a thicker line on the bottom

3. Thick and thin lines give the illusion of lighting. When you see thick, heavy lines you can feel the shadow and where the light is hitting something.

4. Line variation is dynamic and attracts the eye. If you write a word with a regular pen it is not nearly as interesting as if you write the same word with a calligraphy pen. The eye is attracted to a line that changes widths.

When you are working in inking pen you really have only black and white to share the ideas of weight, dimension and light. How do you share the feeling of "gray" or in-between black and white without using color or a gray pen?

In illustration there are many techniques these days, from digital screen-tones and pixels or with traditional stippling or hatching/cross hatching. Stippling can make you go mad though, since it really takes a long time. A much easier and still very much traditional technique would be Hatching.

What is Hatching/Cross Hatching?
You don't see this technique as much as you used to since technology and styles have changed the way people draw, but hatching is a way of drawing lots of lines close together to show volume or shading.

If you think of old illustrations (like my drawing here of the Mad Hatter based on the original Alice In Wonderland book illustrations), you'll know exactly what I mean. Many old illustrations were made in this way because it is easy for a printer to reproduce. From a woodcut or an engraving you can ink this in black and print it out, with people feeling the full range of tone without switching printing inks.

Cross hatching is when you draw more thin lines in the opposite direction to darken up an area. Depending on how fine your pen is and your technique, you can deepen your cross hatching from very light to almost black. The trick comes in learning to keep a steady hand and making your lines consistent and even. Illustrators a few hundred years ago had a lot more patience than I have, since their work was beautiful, detailed, and meticulously drawn.

When used in conjunction with thick and thin outline syou can really show the full range of grays using simple black lines. This is the same concept computer illustrations are based on. Remember the days when the screen was 9 inches and black & white? To show grays you would add more pixels closer to each other and fewer pixels as you got lighter. There were some amazing illustrations made with those clunky pixels. Hatching and cross hatching allow much more freedom than the old pixel techniques, with finesse and skill playing a key role in how much the eye is fooled into thinking the object is gray.

I'll leave you today with a simple cube on which I've added cross hatching. Click on it to enlarge it and just ponder the power of tiny little lines. Notice areas where I had to shift my hand or the paper and it caused a break in my smooth pattern. I really appreciate the skill and effort good hatching takes and how exquisite old illustrations are. I'll talk more about hatching techniques later. Have a grat day!

How to make a comic

I'm out of town for the weekend, so I figured I'd post a fun old comic I drew a while ago about how to make comics. You may print it out and use it for educational use only. Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone in the Seattle class today and the Vancouver BC class on Monday.

New Header- Fall Leaves

Last week I was looking at my mermaid header and I realized I didn't like the angle on her torso, so I had to change her. I know that I'm my own worst critic, but I finally finished my new header and so I'll chat about that today before I move on to some other things.

My drawing process is as follows:
1. Rough Pencil Sketch.This was very loose, more to get an idea of how I wanted the markers placed on the page since I knew there would be leaves everywhere. I was working on color laser copier paper since it's thin enough that I can easily trace if needs be.

2. Sepia line work. I drew over the pencil with a Sepia 0.3 mm Color Multiliner SP. Because the drawing is so large I drew a section at a time and then erased the pencil with a kneaded gum eraser. This helped me keep the line feel consistent. After I had drawn all my main lines and erased the pencil I was able to go back and darken lines, add details to leaves, and generally touch up easier.

3. Photocopy. In the past I've tried to photocopy gray ink drawings with no luck. The color copier picks up some lines gray and some lines dark, so if I wanted all gray lines I would scan in a b & w drawing and make it gray. The copier didn't seem to mind sepia however, my original line work was distinctly reddish in tone. These lines are more neutral brown (which I'm OK with). By copying the work I can always have something to go back to if I make a mistake. I also enlarged this slightly when I copied it, since it's easier for me to color larger things and shrink them down (In comic illustration it is very common to draw oversized and shrink down to get more detail into your work).

4. Color the background. This image is not hard to color- it's just a pile of leaves. What makes it complex is the number of leaves I have to work with. This artwork is about 10.5 in x 6.5 inches. To make it easier to focus on the top layer of leaves I colored my background first. With a W3 I colored anything that wasn't leaves or marker. Then I came back, colored just the gray of the markers (since the markers are a cool gray they stand out against the warm gray) and added a little bit of color tone to some spots of the background gray.

See how much the leaves pop out when I tone down the background? I'm not coloring the ends of the markers yet because I want those to contrast against the leaves, so I'll need to color the leaves first, then pick a good marker color. Markers C1, C2, C3, 0

5. Color the leaves. This was pretty fun. When coloring something large like this, since I am right-handed I usually start on the left and work my way across. This helps me see what I'm coloring and I'm not dragging my had across my work as much. I start light and go dark on each leaf. I tried to keep each leaf to 2 or 3 colors, since I had so many to complete. For the first pass I didn't worry about shadows as much, just the main leaf color.

Once my whole picture was colored I stood back, looked it over, then added my deeper shadows. Remember, shadows add contrast which makes artwork pop out more. Markers E07, E29, E31, E35, E53, E55, R29, YR02, YR04, YR21, YR23, Y00, Y13, Y17, G21, G85, G17.

6. Color the markers. Last I colored the markers with BG07, BV13, V04 and G14- all bright colors I hadn't used in any of the other leaves. As the final touch I added the words on the markers with a Gray 0.05 mm Multiliner.

7. Scan, resize, and alter for my header. I scan into photoshop, clean up the work then I bring that artwork into illustrator where I add my text and other elements. As you can see, the original artwork is a lot larger than my final header will be. I draw it this way so I have plenty of room to crop.

In Photoshop, on artwork like this you can see how my scanner makes the coloring look grainy when in real life it is much smoother. To compensate for the grain I use either the Blur, Blur more, or Despeckle filter to smooth it out a bit. Each scanner is slightly different, and if you're scanning at below 300 dpi then you might not have this problem. Also notice how my pale grays get washed out on the markers so you don't see the smooth transition? To compensate you can color pale areas a little darker than you'll want them to finally end up (it bugs me when I color it darker, so usually I'll go in and manually re-touch my pale colors in photoshop to look correct, though this time I didn't).

F01 Drawing Pen

If you look at my sidebar, you'll see a new link to the Copic Events Calendar. Every now and then go look through what events and shows we have coming up. Every few months I teach comic drawing, architecture rendering, or stamp coloring here in Eugene where Copic is based. I'll try to keep it updated with all my little public appearances, so check back there regularly.

Today I wanted to feature a product that is probably one of our least understood Copic offerings, the F01 Drawing pen.

The F01 Drawing pen is a 0.1 mm disposable Fountain Pen that works beautifully for drawing images with a variable line width. It has a metal fountain pen tip that delivers true dipping-pen style artwork. This is great for the traditional illustrator who likes using old-fashion

ed ink pens, but wants portability and no mess. This is getting tagged as advanced because this pen is tricky to use, and not for everyone.

The F01 pen works best on very smooth, thick paper, with good tight fibers. You don't want to use this on thin, soft papers like regular copier paper or newsprint, since the metal nib will scratch the paper and get clogged with paper-fibers.

Hold the pen at a 45º angle to your paper, with the metal part on top, the black reinforcing part underneath and pull it towards you. If you want a thick line, push harder, if you want a thin line lift up a bit. If you try drawing sideways it won't work as well, nor will it work if it's held upside down.

Japan suggests that you don't drop or shake this pen, since it has a unique system for getting the ink to flow smoothly.

With a little practice this pen will give you wonderful results. I love working in my sketchbook with this pen, since I don't have to re-draw a line or switch pens to get it thick or thin. Also a beautiful pen for hand journalling, you'll really feel like you are working with old-school art supplies. This pen is tricky to learn so most people either love it or hate it. Have a wonderful weekend!

Drawing a picture to color- Low Tide on the Oregon Coast

OK, enough of you wanted to know how I drew the picture in this morning's post. Here is my typical process whenever I draw anything.

Smooth, tight paper. I used color laser copier paper and started with a rough pencil sketch.

Pencil. I draw very lightly with a blunt pencil so it erases cleaner. Erase with a soft eraser, holding the paper on one edge and carefully erasing in smooth even strokes (no scrubbing back and forth). This keeps the paper and ink lines from getting ripped.

Ink. I ink over my pencil lines with a Copic Multiliner 0.1 mm. For thicker lines I will grab a slightly larger pen, or just go over the line twice.

Photocopy before I color. In this case I scanned it into my computer, because I didn't know what size I'd like to color it. Sometimes I touch it up in Photoshop if I need to fix stray lines or pencil that wasn't erased. Then I printed it at a couple sizes and chose one I liked.

Choose Colors. In this case my color palette was chosen by the color rules for E33. Otherwise I would choose colors that matched real sand/nature better (E42, W3, etc.). Many times I go digging on the internet to look at a photo and see what colors will be in real life. For the plaid on yesterday's card I watched the video of the Monty Python skit and worked from there.

If you want to try coloring this picture, go for it, just note where you got the picture from. Send me a link of your colored copy.