The Process of Being Inked

I've always liked the idea of cleaning up my artwork digitally. My inking abilities with traditional pens is an embrassing affair. It's always looked like I was trying to clean up my work during a 6.7 richter earthquake. I wouldn't mind as much if I could erase the lines I didn't like. Except paper doesn't respond too well to ctrl+Z. But digital does!

Unfortunately cleaning up digitally always proved to be pain in the ass. I tried Illustrator to get that nice clean smooth line that guys like Sean Galloway seems to pull off effortlessly. But doing that isss soooo sllloooww. And testing my patience is like testing cosmetics on animals. It's just wrong. Also to do thick or thin lines meant you'd have to go over your lines at least twice. Which is like, twice the work.

I tried to ink with Manga Studio with mixed results. It works great for if I'm going for a traditional comic book look like Jim Lee. I can cross hatch the shit outta drawing with Manga Studio. However when it comes to doing cartoony style that calls for smooth, clean curves....not so much.

Which left Photoshop. Agh. Now I know that photoshop is a great tool for cleaning up especially in a cartoony style because I''ve seen guys like Mathew Humphrey use it almost exclusively. My problem s that I'm curse with a human wrist, and as such I can only bend it so far on my drawing tablet. Paper has this unique feature where you can rotate it as you work, allowing you maxium comfort and the ability to draw lines unhindered by the human anatomy. Pros like to use a Wacom Cintiq to get over this annoyance, which allows you to rotate the moniter as you draw. Except you need to shell out at least a grand for one. And I need that money to fuel my cock fighting habits.

So what's a guy with a strange gambling addiction to do? Well not much, becuase as luck would have it Photoshop came out with an in-program rotating feature! What will the crazy people at Adobe think of next? So I've gone back to photoshop and practiced with the new tools to a lot more satisfying effect. Take a look and let me know what you think!

And if you think that was extremely long writeup that I could've just sum up by saying Photoshop has a rotate tool and I'm having fun using it....well it's your own damn fault for reading this and not looking at the pretty pictures!