Thank you!! :)
Actually, the lines being clean is a trick I learned years back from Ian from the Webcomic McHall. It’s inked by hand tho, unlike most of my other art on this blog.
You need:
- a simple H3 (or H5) pencil
- a scanner
- a colour printer
- a black Pilot ReXgrip F pen (they’re super cheap, last for ages and have the best flow and precision)
- optionally, a STABILO point 88 (fine 0,4), for boarders, because it’s pretty even, but the Pilot works fine, too.
- … Photoshop?
So uh.
Pilot ReXGrip + pencil (damnit webcam, you so blurry)
And this is the STABILO pen. (in case you can see it…)
It’s important to know that it’s not the price of the pen that will make your work amazing - it’s how you weild it.
But yes, first I make a lot of crazy ass messy pencil doodles, like so:
Facial leads, lines over lines - this is really up to you. A sketch should always be your own personal lead for what you want to achieve so, so long as you can decipher it, it can be as messy or as clean as you need it to be. Don’t ever think sketches are supposed to look in a certain way - they’re your own personal annotations. Some anatomy studies help you grasp proportions, but it’s always you who decides which leads you need. For example, I always use the mid-face divider. It helps me build a character’s face.
After that - I SCAN THE SKETCH AS IT IS and - this is really important - import it to photoshop and turn it blue with this setting;
You put a new layer over the sketch layer, Paint Bucket it blue and set the layer mode to ‘LIGHTEN’. It should make all your lines nice and blue evenly.
I don’t clean anything - I just make it pale blue and print it as it is. Or sometimes I rearrange panels on the sketch itself, make something smaller or bigger - edit a little at best, and then print out.
And on those blue sketches - I INK. Like so;
Why is this better than direct inking over pencil? Because it helps you see the flaws in your sketches, and it doesn’t require you to erase anything, because you can later easily remove the blue in Photoshop.
The thing about ReXgrip is, that it acts a lot like a pencil. Don’t be afraid to tilt it or press - it follows your hand beautifully. Sometimes tho the ink gathers on the tip, you might want to have a paper towel to wipe it off if you’re drawing something super fine.
Also, before inking, I suggest you just buy the pen and use it for regular writing for a bit, so you get used to it. The flow is really lovely, I’ve drawn professional comics and illustrations with this type of pen - I found it works better than any other kind of artistic markers, and is super cheap. I strongly suggest you try it.
After inking, I scan the pages again. 150-300dpi, depends on what you want to do with the final result. 300dpi is for fine A4 print, but the general rule is the more dpi the better - the only thing to consider is to not make your Photoshop lag later.
After scanning, I import the scans into Photoshop and remove the blue lines with the following command;
Image > Adjustments > Replace color. It should give you a window like this:
This is where I select the blue on the image itself on the background and then set the bottom, ‘Lightness’ slider to 100. It makes all the blues completely white, leaving only clean lines.
After that, you’ll want to sharpen the lines, and play with the contrast until you’ve got what you’re looking for.
That’s it? :) I swear it’s not complicated, try it.
