Question for the artist (Storn, Nato, etc)

[THE PATRIOT]

I'm looking to see what types of pens or tips you use for inking. Also, do you prefer Photoshop or Illustrator for coloring in illustrations? Last but not least any advise on what type of layers to use for coloring (specifically grey scalled art)?

 

Also a question for fun. When was the last time you did a drawing and without scanning it in, colored by hand the original and make any copies of it. Thus keeping it a rare one-of-a-kind.

 

Thanks guys I appreciate the skills and talent you bring to all of us here.

 

THE PATRIOT

[Storn]

Okay. Let me break down inking into two catagories.

 

Pro. You wannabe a pro. Do NOT use pens, rapidiographs or tech pens. They suck. They give a dead line. They are easy. Too easy. Get yourself several #1 and #2 brushes from various companies and play around. Be prepared for tons of frustration. learning to ink with a brush is really, really hard. But you will get a lively, thick to thin line and it is what the really good inkers use.

 

If you want a bit more control, but a bit sketchy line, dip pens are great. All kinds of nibs are available... I suggest trying out 5 or so, different types to find your favorite.

 

On most of my illos , I use about 80% brush and 20% dip pen. I use dip pen for hands, fingernails, eyes...when I really, really need control in a small space.

 

I also highly recommend "The Art of Comic Book Inking" by Gary Martin, Dark Horse Press. It will show you the proper way of holding a brush.

 

Be warned, go back and look at Normals Unbound. That is my work when I'm just beginning to use the brush (and I was using a #4...WAY too big). My artwork suffered for years because my pencils were better than my inks. Now look at my current work, my inking has caught up.

 

Last tip, pencil your sketches very tight. Teh more decisions you have solid, the easier it is to ink.

 

 

Amateur artist: You don't want to be a pro. Ink with whatever you want. I do use Millennium Tech Pens for very mechanical stuff.. like some sailing ship diagrams I'm working on for AEG.

[Storn]

I do stuff by hand all the time. Almost every day. It is really only for Hero that I work half of it in digital and for my own yuks on my character sketches.

 

But fantasy hero cover is all by hand.

 

Most of my other fantasy clients is grayscale by hand.

 

All my card art for AEG is painting by hand.

[THE PATRIOT]

Thanks for the information on the book. My next questions that I have would be what kind of ink do you recommend and what kind of paper or board do you use (cold/hot pressed, thickness, etc). Also, do you recommend saving images as TIFF's or JPG's for web usage? Have you had problems posting images on discussion boards such as these using a Mac? I love my Mac but it can be frustrating at times.

 

I respectfully enquire this because I've read the schooling some of you guys have had and I have had to put that on hold do to twins being born 4 years ago. Also, the only art school here is MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) is the only one that teaches comic book techniques...and they charge as much as a medical school. Yikes! I'm already eating enough Hamburger Helper...ha ha.

 

Again thanks for the info.

[Nuadha]

I'm not an artist, but as a Mac user, I can give you a quick tip on the Mac. Make sure you save all your files in all lower case, no spaces or other characters not allowed on PCs and with the extension endings (.jpeg and whatnot) that the PCs use. It's annoying, but if you get in the habit of doing it this way, you'll save yourself a headache.

[THE PATRIOT]

Macs

 

Aaaah the lower case characters is where I've been screwing up. I can be such a pudding head.

[Eric Lofgren]

Here's what I do....

 

I respectfully enquire this because I've read the schooling some of you guys have had and I have had to put that on hold do to twins being born 4 years ago. Also, the only art school here is MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) is the only one that teaches comic book techniques...and they charge as much as a medical school. Yikes! I'm already eating enough Hamburger Helper...ha ha.

 

PAtriot, don't worry so much about schooling at this point. Get to it if you can, but it's not the end all be all. I never took any formal schooling at all when it comes to art, other than what I taught myself. Sometimes you really do know what's best if your heart is truly behind it all. Just find the resources you feel are necessary (such as you are doing in this thread) and go from there. There are hundreds of books out there that can assist you on your journey towards this. The most important being books on anatomy (but definitely include your own pursuits as in your own photography if you want), perspective, color theory and anything on layout and design. Drawimg Comics the Marvel Way, believe it or not is an excellent resource for all sapects of comic work. As is Dynamic Figure Drawing by Hogarth. Check your local art store or book store and see what they can provide.

 

As to paper, I just use a book of Strathmore Bristol smooth paper which comes in a pad form. They also have a vellum grade for pencils, which has a bit more of a tooth to it. As most of my work is tranfered digitally, though, I'm not too concerned about paper type. You could even use printer paper if you had to, as it's just going to be scanned in and editted anyway. But, it does pay to use a heavier grade of paper for longevities sake and this Strathmore paper I buy is relatively cheap at 12 to 15 bucks Canadian a pad and you get 20 sheets of 100 lb. If the project is for your own use, though, perhaps 2 or 3 ply illustration board is more what you would need.

 

For the record, I pretty much use just pens now. I started with a brush, but found that going with pens adds a further dimension to the look of my art that lands somewhere between comic style and straight illustration. Chris Stevens uses pens quite a bit as well. For an example of my style, just check out some of the work I did for Ninja Hero, Millenium City, CKC or The Terran Empire. You can also see a bunch of other more recent work for other companies at my website. The link is in my sig.

 

And as for saving your images, tiff's are the format of choice for most publishers, as they carry a lot more detail with them. They also hold the detail longer, where jpg's seriously degrade after many savings. Jpg's on the other hand can smooth out an image to give it a more rich and appealing appearance, but at a large loss of pixels. What I do is make a final 300 dpi tiff copy that goes to the publisher and for my own records, a high res 200 or 300 dpi jpg for proofing (sometimes) and a low res 72 dpi jpg for display purposes only on a forum or web gallery or my web site, etc.

 

Hope all that helps a little and stick with it, whatever you do.

 

 

Eric Lofgren

[Blue]

As far as the posting thing goes, I know these boards only allow certain extensions on posted attachments. I tried to post a 1 page PDF one time and it told me it was an illegal attachment.

JPG, JPEG, BMP, PNG, and typically any file in a ZIP file are okay to post.

 

As far as quality goes, GIFs of course are only 256 colors or less, so if you have a lot of color depth you probably don't want this, though it's fine for Grayscale. JPG has a higher color range and nearly every photoediting program allows you to adjust compression so you can make it really small with low quality or bigger with better quality.

 

I've never been fond of TIF files, because they never seem to be compressed enough for my storage tastes.

 

I'm sure the ARTISTS can give you better info. I'm not an artist, I just draw. (There's a difference)

[lemming]

Advice on graphic file formats.

Keep an original in a non-lossy format. I tend to keep mine in .png format since it has most of the advatages and none of the disadvantages.

 

JPG uses lossy compression. I post web images and the like using it since it's universally accepted by browsers, though PNG is commonly enough accepted. However, I do all my work in PNG before hand. Everytime you open and save a JPG file. you'll lose some information.

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by THE PATRIOT

I respectfully enquire this because I've read the schooling some of you guys have had and I have had to put that on hold do to twins being born 4 years ago. Also, the only art school here is MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design)

 

I'm not an artist either, but my Girlfriend just graduated from the College of Visual Arts on Summit in St. Paul, and a mutual friend still goes there, so there are other schools. Not that there are any good and cheap ones.

[THE PATRIOT]

Originally posted by Jhamin

I'm not an artist either, but my Girlfriend just graduated from the College of Visual Arts on Summit in St. Paul, and a mutual friend still goes there, so there are other schools. Not that there are any good and cheap ones.

 

I have a great deal of respect for the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul. I mentioned MCAD because they actually or at least did have, courses in "applied graphic illustration" translation in my world-super duper hero artist. I did take an introductory course in this at MCAD and found it interesting at the time but program was in a transition with not having instructors extremely familiar with many of the electronic aspects of production.

 

Which brings me to this question. What's the best way, or professional way, to add word balloons to an illustration? Let me put it this way. When I've worked in Photoshop...the word balloons come out looking way too bitmaped. so there's got to be a way the pro's do this that I'm still working on. Do they have templates that you can use say in illustrator and export them onto an upper layer in photoshop? Or should I just stop using Photoshop for illustrations and teach myself how to finish my inked artwork in Illustrator or some other application?

 

Everybody's been a great help so far and I'm getting more useful advice than I've hoped for.

 

THE PATRIOT

[Nato]

I think it's really hard to give a definite answer on exactly what to use for inking. I've seen many people get great result with art pens such as Pigma Microns or tech pens like Radiographs, and then others who use dip pen nibs such as a Hunt 102. Others swear by a Winsor & Newton Series 7 #2 brush. Some ink so well with any of the above tools that it's almost impossible to tell exactly what the employed. Many use a combination of all of the above. Definitely check out Gary Martin's books. He now has a second book out that has four different pages by four different pencilers. Then each pencil page is inked by four different inkers. Then it gives you blueline pages of each pencil page for you to try it yourself. It's really helpful to see how each pages is approached by a different artist and what can be done with ink to bring out the best in a page. I'm not the world's best inker yet so I'm really practicing that hard these days. I can slowly see improvement. It's best to familiarize yourself with any tool out there for inking and learn how to pick the best tool for the job and the best tool for how you like to draw. Definitely don't just settle for one tool because it's easiest without giving others try.

 

I use the smooth Bristol board as well. Holds the ink better; well at least the batches I've had lately. Paper and ink quality can vary from unit to unit within the same brand. It's wierd. Paris paper might work for you too. It's made for technical drawing though and it's pretty thin, so it won't stand up to much brushwork. Bristol's the stuff for that.

 

Definitely follow Storn's advice on pencilling tight. It's much better to plan it all out in pencil. Then again, Steve Dillon of Preacher and Punisher fame hands in such loose pencils that it's hard to tell what's going on. He inks them himself though. He's just one of those guys.

 

I agree with Eric. Don't worry too much about art school. While I'm not saying that it's worthless at all, it's not the most important thing in the world. I would however suggest getting involved in a figure drawing class or group. This is one of the greatest things that help you learn to draw better. Observing the nude form is incredibly helpful.

[Nato]

Balloon Tales - This is a good site for tutorials on digital lettering.

[Nato]

Oh, just remembered something.

 

Frank Cho, cartoonist of Liberty Meadows and amazing illustrator, uses Micron pens for pretty much all of his inking, other than filling in major areas of black. I was pretty amazed when I heard that.

 

http://www.libertymeadows.com/

[JmOz]

Originally posted by Storn

Okay. Let me break down inking into two catagories.

 

Be warned, go back and look at Normals Unbound. That is my work when I'm just beginning to use the brush (and I was using a #4...WAY too big). My artwork suffered for years because my pencils were better than my inks. Now look at my current work, my inking has caught up.

 

 

You are to hard on your self, some of the stuff in there is dang good (The cop shooting at targets for instance is still one of my favorite pieces in any Hero book)

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by JmOz

You are to hard on your self, some of the stuff in there is dang good (The cop shooting at targets for instance is still one of my favorite pieces in any Hero book)

 

I certainly can't answer for artwork, but I'll bet it's the same issue I run into with my writing. Reading stories & articles wrote 15 years ago is almost painful for me -- and yet, other people that read them now still think they're pretty good.

[Eric Lofgren]

Originally posted by Nato

Oh, just remembered something.

 

Frank Cho, cartoonist of Liberty Meadows and amazing illustrator, uses Micron pens for pretty much all of his inking, other than filling in major areas of black. I was pretty amazed when I heard that.

 

http://www.libertymeadows.com/

 

So, too, with Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame

 

And yes, figure drawing would help a great deal. Good call, Nato. I should have thought to include that in my post.

 

Eric Lofgren

[Nato]

By the way Eric, I've become a big fan of your stuff. I like the texture in your inking. You get a lot of nice "greys" with your hatching and feathering. Your latest stuff in MC were some of my favorites.

[Storn]

Originally posted by Eric Lofgren

So, too, with Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame

 

And yes, figure drawing would help a great deal. Good call, Nato. I should have thought to include that in my post.

 

Eric Lofgren

 

Mignola, using Microns for his graphic blocking out makes sense. Cho, however, also uses quills. It is even mentioned he is breaking in "new ones" in a strip of Liberty Meadows.

 

Listen, folks, do not get wrapped up in the ease of Microns. They are a trap. Trust me. Both Mignola and Cho can ink with a brush and/or quill and have "returned" to tech pens. Now, especially Cho is "simulating" what a brush stroke looks like in his cartooning. He has great thick/thin lines. But if you don't work with a brush first, you'll never understand what makes inking work well. One more thing about the brush... once mastered... it is faster than a Micron. I can lay down 5 strokes, all different sizes, all with thick and thin in the time it will take a Micron to fill in one stroke.

 

Eric, as far as education goes, sure... my mother is a self-taught artist... she teaches art and we have discussions that match my former professors's acumen. However, I learned the same things she did about 3x as fast. And she admits it. Much of a good art school is making the artist make choices and decisions and teaching good shortcuts and techniques (I never understood guoache, til I saw a 15 minute demonstration on how to mix it to the right consistency...then it was easy). Much of school is forcing the artist to tackle things that he/she doesn't want to... for me, it was cloth folds.

 

But I would have never picked up Oil paint on my own. I never oil painted til I went to art school. Changed my life. And if you really want to talk about how to improve your inking... paintiing and sculpting and learning how to follow form will do WONDERS for your inking. Art School offers that cross polinization of technique and ideas.

 

Yes, art school is expensive, CCAD cost me plenty of money. But it was worth every single penny. Freelancing throughout art school certainly helped... but the stuff I was learning in the classroom, I turned around immediately that week, and applied to actual professional work. Then handed in the published work as homework.

 

Let me also state that I got a ton out off CCAD because, in my mind, I started back at 26. Being an older student really helped. When I was 17 and at New York University, I was clueless. And that education did not help me as much...besides paving away a lot of prereqs for CCAD.

[Nato]

There is definitely great value in having someone physicaly SHOW you how something is done. Whether it's at a private art school or a community college, a good teacher can definitely unlock things that you may never get from a book. I was also scared to paint in oils until my figure drawing teacher at the local community college taught a painting class. Since I had so much respect for that guy I signed up for his painting class and finally tackled that fear. What he taught us in the first class TOTALLY showed me that there was nothing intimidating about oils other than my ignorance of the medium. Once he showed me the order in which to paint, how to mix paints and glazes and stuff, it wasn't that hard at all. No harder than any other paints I'd used. I just had a stigma about the fact that they weren't water based. It would have taken me much longer to start painting in oils if I hadn't had him to give me some basic instructions.

 

If it's too late in life to devote four solid years to school, don't worry. You can take a class here and there. Or get involved with an artists group in your community. Or find a local artist that's better than you and hang out with 'em. It's the exposure to better artists that will help you get better, if you already have the drive to do so. Heck, even chatting with another artist online will help. I've seen kids get out of private art schools who haven't gotten much better than when they enrolled. And I've seen kids in community colleges that take one class and then show remarkable improvment. And these were people who thought they had NO drawing ability and took they class because they had to. It's all in loving to draw, wanting to learn, learning to observe, and having great teachers - wherever they are. Sometimes they're in a classroom, other times they're online or in a book.

 

The key to understanding good inking is first learning how to draw well. After that, studying how line weights are used and principles of design (which are actually part of leanring how to make a good drawing anyway). Learning about what draws your eye to the subject of importance. If you understand that stuff, you'll be a successful inker.

 

Besides, everyone knows that inkers are just tracers. (Chasing Amy reference for humor, just in case any artists are thinking about hunting me down.)

[Eric Lofgren]

Originally posted by Storn

Eric, as far as education goes, sure... my mother is a self-taught artist... she teaches art and we have discussions that match my former professors's acumen. However, I learned the same things she did about 3x as fast. And she admits it. Much of a good art school is making the artist make choices and decisions and teaching good shortcuts and techniques (I never understood guoache, til I saw a 15 minute demonstration on how to mix it to the right consistency...then it was easy). Much of school is forcing the artist to tackle things that he/she doesn't want to... for me, it was cloth folds.

 

Storn, you are absolutely correct. And I hope I didn't come across as implying that art education wouldn't provide benefit to a lot of people. But in the context of this thread, Patriot is saying that formal schooling is not an option and as a father of two myself I completely sympathize with his situation. School and family, especially a young family are a definite no no when bills need paid and food and clothes need to be provided. Yet, an artistic drive is just that, a drive and a bugger to get rid of. Thus, we are still left with an option of improving ourselves through self study. Which, I suspect, probably provides more benefit to the dedicated student with a strong sense of direction in where they want to go, then the student ho humming his/her way through art school receiving possibly questionable advice from a "teacher".

 

When I say I never took an art class, it means just that. I never took one single class regarding anything about art. Everything I know and I can cover a broad spectrum of disciplines, styles and mediums, I taught myself. Granted, the time frame is a bit drawn out, but it's very doable as long as the drive and a willingness to learn and observe exist. There are many pro in this field who can say the same. Three that immediately jump to mind are Berni Wrightson, who took 6 monthes of instruction after doing one of those "can you draw this pirate" tests on the back of a match book. And the Hidebrandts, who also only had about 6 months instruction formally.

 

 

 

 

 

Originally posted by Nato

It's all in loving to draw, wanting to learn, learning to observe, and having great teachers - wherever they are. Sometimes they're in a classroom, other times they're online or in a book.

 

As I was saying

 

The key to understanding good inking is first learning how to draw well. After that, studying how line weights are used and principles of design (which are actually part of leanring how to make a good drawing anyway). Learning about what draws your eye to the subject of importance. If you understand that stuff, you'll be a successful inker.

 

A couple thoughts about inking. I think a good understanding of what arena you want to work in has a great deal to do with what tools you want to use. Comics are paramount when it comes to dynamic figure brush inking. But that's not automatically the case for traditional style inking. Where the emphasis is on accurate anatomy with dynamism given to overall layout and strong contrasts in lighting and forms. An excellent example of that is the aforementioned Mike Mignola, who blocks in his layouts and finishes with pens of varying sizes. Myself, I don't want to be thought of as stricly a comic style inker but more of an illustrator, so have taken up pens which I feel provides me with my own unique out put or style. And as Rpg's in general represent a broad cross section of styles and genres, I feel that a more diverse approach to methods is needed and is just advantageous. Hero Games, on the other hand, specializes in comic style story telling and the comic approach to the art is almost automatic, yet, I think that sometimes even here, something a little different in style is appreciated.

 

(I will emphasize that I use the diposable pens and not the refillable technical pens. The former yield quite nicely to pressure and provide a nice varyed line where the latter are cumbersome and provide nothing in the way of dynamism.)

 

Brushes are always an option of course and always will be. I was just looking at some old art by Alfredo Alcala, who works in a Booth/Wrightson vein and all his lines were done with a specially designed chinese calligrahy brush. And his work is mind boggling. I just don't think that a brush is the be all end all tool for all genres or styles or for all people. I feel strongly that the discipline you decide to work in is in some small way defined by your choice of inking tools and more importantly, your proficiency with it as well. So, I suppose the way I view it is that an understanding of brush dynamics is important, but doesn't cover all aspects of inking, which are all equally rewarding.

 

Unless, of course, you want to be known as a comic inker, then learn your brush techniques and practise, practise, practise

 

 

All of tha above going for two cents only

 

Eric

 

By the way, Nato, thank you very much for your kind words on my work. I was very pleased with the way my work turned out in Mill. City myself and I'm really looking forward to doing more (which I am )

[THE PATRIOT]

You guys really have been great to talk to about your views on art and drawing. It's funny how at this moment in my life I am branching out into so many different aspects of what is art. My wife picked me up a used pottery wheel at a art school, I'm practicing oil painting for the first time (I picked up over 40 vidios from a great oil instructor, Helen Van Wyk), and I can't begin to tell you what you guys have done for my inspiration to apply new techniques to my art work (whether traditional or digital (thanks Nate for the Photoshop tid bits). I have done much classroom work in figure drawing and I'm getting the itch to try it out again now that I have improved over the years. Besides it gives me a chance to see nude chicks with tons o' arm pit hair who look like Slash from G.N.R. (Ahhhh figure drawing models, ha ha) Had an old guy once get up on the platform. Everybody looked at each other with the look of, "great an old guy". That was until he removed the robe and had muscles better than any of us, looked like Sean Connery, and gave dinamic poses like a super hero. We all felt very crusty after that.

 

Like I said before, you guys are a great inspiration for getting the artistic creativity going again. Thanks.

[Nato]

Patriot, gald we could help you out. It's been fun sharing ideas. BTW, is the pic on the Yahoo Group from your WWW link your illustration?

[THE PATRIOT]

Originally posted by Nato

Patriot, gald we could help you out. It's been fun sharing ideas. BTW, is the pic on the Yahoo Group from your WWW link your illustration?

 

Oops, I'm busted. I'm so against the gray scaled artwork and then I get busted for using it on my Yahoo Group. Ha ha.

 

Actually, I was trying to capture the look of a black and white photo from WWII. The twisting motion of the guy wearing the cape came out awkward. I really need to study the human form doing a twist of the torso to see how the chest moves and the abs kind of do a funny twist.

 

I also tried to do a bit more simplistic line quality to capture a look of comic art of the 40's. (Kirby and Simon Captain America). It is a challenge to bring everything that you've learned to try and do the style of the first Superman's and Batman's. I have to be careful of my Yahoo Group being posted because I put artwork dating back to when I was 13 in order to pad my world with visuals of back ground characters.

 

I should put up my drawing of Firewing from the Enemies days. I had fun with that one.