Tag: wash

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Penguin in a cape

Here’s today’s cartoon.

I bought a lightbox to see if it would help me get around some frustrations I’ve been having recently. I’ve only used it this morning, but my first impressions are that it was well worth it.

For this cartoon I drew it in pencil on marker paper (because it’s thin) and then went over it in pen when I was happy with it. Then I put it on the lightbox with a bit of bristol board on top and inked it out. Then I used the bristol board inked picture as the base image and put another piece of paper on top to do the colouring in wash. It was far faster than erasing and quite easy, although it’s still not very easy to see through because the bristol board is quite thick. For the colouring, next time I think I’ll print out a scanned version – this should make it easier to see and reduce the stress of thinking my wash might go through the top layer to the inked layer. Fun!

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Dog yoga

Here is today’s cartoon. I’ve been trying to learn about nibs and ink and bought a collection to experiment with. I’ve never used nibs like this before and I really enjoyed them.

Yes, I went to yoga today.

Details of the pic: Pencil on Bristol Board (A4). Penciled first and then inked with a couple of nibs. I then coloured it with ink and brush. I had to try some correction stuff with opaque white – it didn’t work very well, but a good lesson to learn.

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More on the flying dog

I was thinking about a couple of things today. I started on ink techniques and using a brush for outline and colouring. That resulted in this.

My problem is I’m very impatient, so I didn’t let the outline ink dry properly before starting on the colouring. That resulted in the grey bits. I also didn’t think about the lights in the windows in the skyline at first, which is why the ones on the right don’t have any. I think it might have worked well to not have a black line around the moon, also.

After that I did some reading about inking techniques and thought more about the width of the line and using hatching to create shaded areas. That resulted in this.

I did this in pencil first and then used my brush pen for the main sections and a couple of finer pens for the other areas of black. Again, impatience got the better of me and I tried to erase the pencil lines before the ink was dry. That meant the drainpipe went very smudgy and I had to try to rescue it, so it has more happening on it than I’d planned and than I think works. I was trying to work out how to make sure the cat is probably seen in the frame. Partly, it’s ok because it’s well placed in the picture, but mostly I think it’s the lack of anything else in the background to pull the eye that allows it to be seen. Not sure. I tried editing the picture on my computer to reduce the black on the drainpipe. Do you think it’s better?

I think I prefer it with less drainpipe. And here it is with an additional shading layer, which I think makes it better. I initially had the door the same shade as the walls, but when the door in the alley is darker it pulls the eye a bit more and creates more depth in the alley.

I’ve a lot to learn…