How to Final digital tools

How to Line Art (Semi-Digital)

How to Line Art (Semi-Digital)

Illustrated by Xackasyss

Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Skeletons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Upload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

How to Line Art (Semi-Digital)

Reference

First off,

You want to find an image that sparks your in terest. This will be the starting point that guides your art. While it’s not necessary, using a refer ence photo is a great way to start the creative process. Whether it’s taking aspects of it to create your piece, or redesigning it in your style.

For this tutorial, we recommend using a refer ence picture to give yourself a starting point, something to base your picture off of.

When picking a reference photo its important to evaluate your interests, goals, and style. Be sure to draw something similar to your style and skill level to avoid burnout. A good rule of thumb for if you are wanting to learn to draw better, do something that is 10 percent harder than what you are currently capable of.

If it’s too hard, you risk burnout, but if it’s too easy, you risk loosing motivation. Always evalu ate your own capabilities and where you want to go with it.

Another Important factor when picking out a ref erence is to consider what your goals are. If your looking to make an in depth drawing, it may be nice to use a detailed picture with higher con trast. While if your looking to make are cartoon strip, you may be looking for something more simplified so it’s easier to make alterations.

Finally, be sure to consider your personal in terests. If you like drawing landscapes, you probably don’t want to choose a dog. Or if you’re looking to person, don’t pic a picture where the person is tiny and its focused on landscape.

Reference pictures likely will take the most forethought. This is why you will be basing your line art off of, and thus will be the foundation for your work. (Note; references pictures are not mandatory, they are intended to get the creative process started. If you have an idea, roll with is and see what you are capable of creating.)

For this book, we will be using a picture taken by Ben Weber, and posted on unsplash for free use. We will be focusing on the person for this demo, and not incorporate the background.

Sketch

The next step is getting it out, pencil and paper. This is where your individual creativity will likely show the most influence.

While frustrating to say, there is no one way to do this next step, it largely relies on the individu al artist and their preference in styles, along with whatever technique they may use.

Grids

A common technique used for precision is the use of grids. This can easily be done by making a physical copy of your reference. Then, using rulers, make a consistent even grid across the reference.

Next, make a proportional grid, drawing this one lightly, on the paper you want your line art to be on. For this project blank white paper is recom mended.

Finally, begin drawing! Copy the lines you see in the boxes on your reference into the corre sponding box on your drawing.

Note; the smaller the grid, and more boxes you use, the more precise this method is.

Tracing

A technique for learning and practicing propor tions is tracing. For this technique, instead of using a smooth white paper, you will be using

trace paper. This seemingly white paper is very

thin and lightweight, making it partially see through. Though be aware, the completely flat surface does increase smudging.

For this technique, you will get a physical copy of your reference, then lay your trace paper over the top. It’s recommended you tape it in place on the corners to avoid your trace paper shifting while drawing.

This technique will allow you to see your refer ence and directly trace it. The only downside being that the trace paper isn’t 100% translu cent, so it may result in a loss of details.

Skeleton

The final technique we will be discussing is creating a “skeleton”. There are many ways to do this technique, giving this technique the most creative freedom.

This technique can be altered the most to fit your individual style, whether its realistic, car toonist, or anywhere in between.

Some common forms of this technique include boxing out what you are drawing, creating an actual skeleton and adding muscles and skin, or just suggestive lines and shapes to make a rough outline before adding details.

Sketching Is Almost Everything

Outline

This is the final physical step of your process before making it digital. While this is a fast step, that can be done fairly easily compared to the others, you still need to think of where your going with your art.

It may just seem like all you need is a pen or marker, but this step its important to consider thicknesses of your medium and the goal your aiming for.

A fine tipped medium can allow for precision, leaving marks only where you want them and not overpowering, but every pro has a con. In this case, if you want a thicker line, its often left jagged and rough. The lack of emphasis from the thin lines can also cause a loss of depth and make an image look flat.

Too thick of a medium can cause the loss of detail, bleeding and going outside of the desired lines. A thick medium often means less control and can be considered reckless. However, the added bold lines create emphasis. They can

be used to portray shadows, closeness, or just to draw the eye into one point. Thick lines are useful in making an image appear more three dimensional. The bes choice for line art is to use a mixture of thick and thin lines, getting the small details you want, while incorporating depth and inter est. That being said, sticking to thinner lines can make it seem more realistic, while having a variety of thicknesses can cause your image to become more cartoonish.

Finally, while thicknesses of your lines is import ant for depth, you should also consider texture and implied shades. If you choose to add a tex ture, it may take away from the smoothness, but can help add to the depth of a piece. Repeating a texture in varying densities can help to imply form. Fore example, denser lines on the edges can help to round off an object, or denser lines inside can imply a dent or fold.

Upload

The Final Steps of this process is uploading it onto Photoshop.

You’ll want to quickly hit your picture with an eraser once the ink is completely dry to remove all graphite lines showing outside of the ink. By doing this you simplify the colors into black and white, while removing any grays.

This is important because during this step, you’ll be dividing the picture into black and white, and grays can often muddle the image.

You don’t need it to be perfectly black and white, but the cleaner your image is, the smoother the transition onto the computer will be.

You also want a place with good lighting, natural lighting being recommended. When taking the picture avoid casting shadows on the image, while uploading an image shadows show up as grays and can threaten the hard work and detail you put into it.

Taking the picture is the most critical part of this step. You want something close so its in better

focus and when uploading it, this avoids major pixalization. However, if taking the picture too close it can cause distortion due to the lens used.

If using your phone to take the picture, a pro tip to get the maximum pixels per inch, and least amount of distortions is to take it from a dis tance, but zoom in. The distance will help fight the distortion, but by zooming in, you get the max amount of information in the picture.

Next, download the image on your device with Photoshop. Whether you’re using a hard drive, airdrop, or emailing it to yourself, any technique to transfer the picture onto the desired device will work for this purpose.

Next upload the image onto Photoshop. If your device allows you to you can drag and drop, or you can go to file -> open -> then select the downloaded image you want to open.

Next, you will select image in the top left of the screen. In the drop down menu you want to select mode, then gray scale the image.

Go back to image, select mode, but then this time you want to choose bitmap. Set it to a 50% threshold, then hit OK.

Finally go back to image one last time, select mode, and put it back into gray scale. Make sure

when you gray scale it this time, the color is in RGB. This will allow you to print it off if desired.

If you’re wanting to color it within Photoshop, you’ll have to do one additional step. Choose select in the top left hand corner, then go down to color range. Using the dropper, select white. This will outline everything white on the line art; from there delete the white coloring and it will only leave the black outlines the image.

Now you can add layers on Photoshop and color away. As long as you have your outline layer at the top of your layers, you’ll be able to color without having to worry about covering your lines.