Experiments
This drawing was finished in December 2008. I’d planned to use it as a first step in the process of finding a good colouring technique. I was going to reproduce the same image in colour in both traditional and digital forms. This picture was the first thing that came to mind which had a variety of materials in it, including smoke, shiny and dull metals, grass, sky, and so on.
I ended up thinking through the various media combinations I was considering and decided that none of them would work as a long-term technique for the style I wanted, so this drawing is all there is of the series! I think it took about five hours in several small sessions (excluding the initial blue pencil rough). I used a 2B mechanical pencil and a black Polychromos pencil.
It seems my pen drawing skills aren’t what they were back in my pre-animation days, but these exercises might still be interesting for artists who are exploring different methods (like I am). Finding models the right sizes looked to be a little tricky, so I dispensed with live reference for this one!
All were drawn on smooth, white A4 (the blue one was drawn on standard copy paper). The first picture was the rough I traced from for all the others (with the help of a lightbox). The second was drawn fairly quickly (and a bit lazily) with a Faber-Castell PITT brush pen (I’m not used to brush pens, but I can see some of their major potential). The third and fourth were done with Copic pens with the fixed-width, fine points most pens have. The last was drawn with a 0.7 2B mechanical pencil (Faber-Castell) and a black coloured pencil (Faber-Castell Polychromos). The last also took the longest to draw, but I have an idea involving markers which may reduce drawing time…
Edit – There’s now a colour version!