Real to Digital

Here is a side-by-side of my most recent real-media-to-digital picture, since I just talked about doing it.  The image on the left is my unaltered original sketch, ballpoint pen on lined paper.  The one to the right has been altered.

The first thing I did was convert the raw sketch to black and white, altering the blue levels so that the notebook lines almost disappear (if you look closely they are visible in the altered version).  Then I added a color layer underneath my sketch, and a shadow layer over it.  A blah textured bg came next that I don’t particularly like, and last I added the shadow words and copyright.  Voila.  So essentially the end product is the same pen sketch that I came in with, just with more bells and whistles.

Real Media?

Yeah…I don’t use it much for my TLK fanart. I don’t have anything against real media, it’s just not as convenient for me. The picture above is my most detailed piece created entirely with real media, made with yellow paper, colored pencils, and fine-tipped Sharpie. I have a couple of others in my gallery, but few and far between.

I say real media is not convenient for me mostly because it’s hard for me to keep the supplies necessary to create all of the colors I normally use. Colored pencils are the easiest for me to use, but I need dozens of them in order to make a pic like the one above. It’s also difficult to fix mistakes made with colored pencils, since it’s mostly an additive process. Markers are likewise unforgivable, and if you’ve seen my one wholly-marker pic, you can see my lack of skills using them. Paints are my favorite as far as flexibility, particularly oil, but they’re just so messy to use…it’s a very involved process mixing the paints, switching brushes, having a clear workspace, etc.

I do still sketch and doodle, but I usually alter them or use them as the base for more detailed photoshop pics. In general, I just don’t bother with real media when digital drawing can be so much simpler. All the brush sizes I want, all the colors I need, and no mess…just my tablet, computer, and software. Done and done. Not to mention that handy-dandy “undo” function!

Tablet Talk

For those who are wondering what I use to digitally draw, I am currently using the Wacom Bamboo Fun 6×8 (silver), purchased in December 2008.  I have model CTE-650, the one that originally came in the green box.  Here is an excellent comprehensive review of the model I use; Wacom is now selling a more modern version of the Bamboo Fun (orange box) on their website.

This is actually my second tablet; my first was a small blue Wacom with a drawing space of 4×6 inches (compared to the 6×8 I currently have).  It was the Wacom Graphire4, in blue, and I actually still have it and use it as my backup tablet.  It’s perfectly functional four years after I bought it, which is an indicator of its long-term quality. I highly recommend starting out with a smaller tablet; then after a year or two upgrading in size if you want.  Graphire4 tablets are long gone, but Wacom is offering a new small tablet called the Bamboo Craft which looks intriguing.

I recommend Wacom as a tablet manufacturer for interested casual fanartists because they are very affordable, and to be honest most fanart does not require the precision of the higher-priced Intuos models or similar brands.  Maybe in five years you might feel the need for more pressure levels or similar flashy stats, but when just beginning in the world of tablets that really isn’t necessary–it will be enough of a wow factor to be able to draw on your computer the way you would on a piece of paper!  If you’re less of a hobbyist and more of a serious art student, I would ask your professors what they would recommend, since I’m coming from a purely hobby perspective.

I also suggest waiting for the holiday season, if you can…I got my Bamboo fun for about 1/2 price ($110 when it normally retailed $199).  I think Best Buy carries the latest Bamboos in-store if you just can’t wait, though. ;)  And maybe you can’t – tablets are just so much FUN!

Enhanced Sketch

The “enhanced sketch” is the method I most frequently use in Sketcher for producing lines.  Most artists have a sketch layer, then use a different layer for inking/lining.  The enhanced sketch eliminates the need for a second step.

1. Basically, I start out with a very light gray for the initial rough sketch.  Gray is important because all four layers in Sketcher multiply on one another, and gray will automatically darken whatever color I choose to put over it.  It’s nice because it doesn’t lock me into using a set of colors like using a brown or yellow might do.
2. As I refine my lines, I use darker and darker shades of gray.  Eventually I end up with about a 50-70% value gray in my completed sketch.  I darken the lines I deem necessary and simply ignore lines that go astray.
3. I review the sketch and look for stray lines that are too crazy – I erase those.  Depending on how “clean” I want the finished product to look, I will erase more of my lighter lines.  Then I’m done!

I like using an enhanced sketch because it’s a little less crisp, a little more organic-feeling.  It’s the way I would sketch in a notebook or with real media. (Layers?  We don’t need no stinking layers!) It’s also more forgiving than a harsh line is; instead of erasing, I can just darken it more in the direction I want the curve to go.  I don’t have to worry about wobbles of the pen as much, which is something that plagues me whenever I use a tablet.

Another benefit the enhanced sketch lends in Sketcher: because it is a one-layer method, the ink layer is free for me to repurpose.  Usually this means I can use it as a background layer, something Sketcher lacks.  Having a separate layer for background lets me simply erase any part that overlaps my character when I’m done, not having to worry about coloring “inside the lines” so to speak.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the “enhanced sketch” brings to the table.

Why a Blog?

Well, I am now ten posts into this nifty experiment called a blog, and so far I’m liking it.  So maybe it’s time to talk a little more about why I decided to try it in the first place.

The biggest reason, I suppose, is my community-specific drawing style.  Currently I upload exclusively at The Lion King Fan Art Archive.  For a while I used a FurAffinity gallery just so I could link to bigger .png files of my work.  At one time I did a couple of pieces of artwork forWajas as well.  But both of those quickly died out, while my presence at TLKFAA has remained strong ever since 2006.

I’ve talked about in my uploads why I stick with TLKFAA instead of, say, deviantART,or while I only upload at TLKFAA and not other LK sites like MLKFAA.  It has to do with restraining myself so that digital art doesn’t overwhelm my life, among other things.  However, the result of this means that on TLKFAA, the only way I can express myself is in 750 characters per upload, which is incredibly frustrating for someone as verbose as myself – see my AotM speech for how annoyingly wordy I can be.  (Needless to say, I loathe sites like Twitter…and don’t get me started on YouTube comments.  Reducing intelligent conversation to txtspeak–my little Creative Writing brain would be screaming hysterically all the way to the looney bin.  Ah, I’m getting a great idea for a short story…but I digress.)

If I had a “journal” on DeviantArt I would be able to write all I wanted, but with the 750-char limit on TLKFAA that just isn’t possible.  Hence, blog.  Now I can happily blather here on Coalf for as long as I want, not worried about tichy details such as being careful not to double-space after sentences since that eats up my precious characters-remaining.  Hopefully in the future I can direct traffic from my TLKFAA uploads if I find myself with something more to say about a particular picture, and in the meantime I can chatter to myself about myself, setting my thoughts about my art down on paper, as it were.

And so that is a very basic backstory for the reason I began to blog.  And for those interested, this post is precisely 2160 characters. ;)

Lineart by Moi

I was working on a collab with Mizan in Sketcher a few days ago (here’s how it turned out) where we did something fun and colored each other’s lines.  Mizan mentioned something about how my lines were fun to color, and that I should consider putting lineart like that up for others to play with.

It’s an interesting thought, particularly because I have never offered lineart up that has been drawn in Sketcher before.  In Sketcher I usually use a technique I call a “refined sketch” – I sketch heavier and heavier in a gray color which eventually becomes my lines (works well since the layers in Sketcher all multiply).  My Sketcher lines usually wind up looking so much better than my Photoshop ones – this lineart to the right was done in Photoshop and I don’t like it much at all.

The problem is, I am jealous of my lines.  They are mine!  MINE!  It’s like the story of the Little Red Hen…I came up with the character, I sketched the character, I refined my sketch, and now I wanna eat the gosh-darned bread!  Meaning, I want to color it because coloring is the most funnest thing ever compared to the pain of sketch/lining.  I love color.  I even made a site contest about colors, once.  One of my favorite television shows has to do with using color to decorate.

So, if you ever see me succumb and put up some Sketcher lines for other fanartists to color, now you will know the pain I had to go through to force myself to do that. Aagh!

Motivation Station

Some people might look at my uploads and ask, “What the heck are you doing, making art in Sketcher when you have a perfectly good, brand-new Adobe Photoshop CS4 with all the bells and whistles?  Why limit yourself to four transparent layers, four hours, and limited drawing space?”

Excellent question, and one I often ask myself when I become enraged at Sketcher (which happens very frequently).  Here’s the thing about Sketcher – it makes me draw.  It’s a motivational tool.

I did not really give Sketcher a chance back on my old laptop, with Adobe Photoshop 7 inherited from my older cousin (no extra licenses). But then, when I got my new laptop to take to college, I suddenly was Photoshop-less.  The only way I was going to draw anything, since I am abysmal at real media, was to go on Sketcher.    For a period of about five months, I drew exclusively on Sketcher.  And funnily enough, I found I was drawing more often.  Here are some of the reasons I adore Sketcher, and why it motivates me to draw:

1. Four-hour time limit.  It means that I can set aside one chunk of my day, and know that I won’t go over it because I’m too engrossed in what I’m doing.  It’s also helped me with my completion speed.
2. Four layers = less complexity.  Complex pics take me forever, and I inevitably become frustrated or bored and they die when I lose interest in them.  Photoshop is a TRAP!  It makes me start huge projects that I will never finish.  Sketcher frees me from that.
3. Painting.  Sketcher is so much fun to paint in, and I’ve become so used to the settings that any other program earns my wrath for not having Sketcher’s simplicity.  I cannot paint in Photoshop the way I do in Sketcher, and as for lining in Photoshop?  Ugh, forget it!
4. Human contact. Or cyber-human-contact, anyway.  I can talk to other users while I’m working, and if I get art block, the conversation will usually help me figure out what to draw.  I also can do collabs, which are a lot of fun.

There are probably more reasons why I prefer Sketcher, but I’ve noticed that reset just happened and I really want to draw something tonight.  So I will bid Coalf adieu and hop over there to have some Sketchery fun!