A few people have asked me to do a process post on how I make my illustrations, so here it is - all my (not so) cunning secrets revealed…

1. The stuff I draw with. It’s pretty basic and I still haven’t found a pen I really love, so will continue to buy them all until I do.

2. I forgot to take a picture at the pencil stage. Sorry. I’m a bad documenter - but here’s the drawing all inked and ready to scan.

3. Colouring in! I use Photoshop for everything I do digitally, pretty much by default - it’s just what I happen to have on my computer.

4. Getting rid of lines. This is a bit that might make me a lunatic, but I’ve yet to find a better way of doing it (if you know one please, for the love of god, tell me). Basically I select the black lines bit by bit and paint-bucket them the right colour, I’ve gotten pretty quick at it by now and hey, doesn’t the picture look better? Kind of. This is a good time to put a film on in the background to avoid insanity.

5. Adding light and shade. Here I just select areas with the magic wand and then use a custom pastel-type brush to add highlights and shadows and generally make the picture look more interesting.

6. All coloured in with highlights and shadows added.

7. Adding texture! This is a rolled ink texture I found somewhere, it’s nice and scruffy.

8. Set the texture layer to ‘Overlay’ at 25% opacity, I’ll then change it to 30%, squint, change it back to 25%, squint, repeat, etc.

9. Finished! Along the way I do the usual little bits of tweaking and fixing things, but this is basically the way I’ve somehow ended up making pictures. 

OK, hope that was of some use to someone somewhere, if you’ve got any questions please ask away. 

Notes

  1. jugodemono reblogged this from robbieporter
  2. unitedstatesofaaron reblogged this from robbieporter
  3. robbieporter reblogged this from elenikalorkoti
  4. 09912311 reblogged this from elenikalorkoti and added:
    no matter what the process is, it’s intrinsically what is drawn that matters.
  5. samsmyth said: That pencil sketch was the main one I wanted to see! Thanks for sharing.
  6. artandillustrationilike reblogged this from elenikalorkoti
  7. elenikalorkoti posted this