As cliche as this sounds one of the biggest hurdles you’ll ever deal with is yourself.
“I HAVE to be able to draw this with the tools other professionals use.”
“I shouldn’t use reference or guides because I should know this by heart.”
“I shouldn’t color pick, trace, or rely too heavily on photos or reference, that’s a crutch.”
“My reasons for drawing and improving are altruistic and cannot fill with joy or provide me with wealth.”
Do any of these sound like you? Chances are most of you make decisions based on assumptions. You need to stop that now and here is why.
Results.
If you consider yourself an artist you most undoubtedly have a million ideas, jokes or a million poses to draw. You aren’t going to get through any of that worrying about how you think others are doing it.
Truth time! In every major professional artistic field, talented highly regarded artist use reference, trace photos, color pick photos, cover mistakes with gloss and generally do whatever it takes to get the results they want.
Here are some examples of things I know are done in every field. These are people in top positions at companies or considered very skilled and talented.
Concept art
Photobashing – Literally hacking photos together and painting on top. You would think this is kept for the concept phase but some of this stuff makes it to game covers.
3D Paintover – Making a limited 3d model and painting over it to achieve good results. Especially helpful if you have Ambient occlusion and proper lighting.
Color Picking Photos – Believe it or not the majority of your favorite concept artist owe a lot of their presentation and skill to a skillful photographer. You will never hear of these photographers because how most concept artists use photographs for color and light referencing is kept separate enough from the source to never really put a finger on it.
Color Picking Art – Same shit different pile.
Comics & Manga
Inking – No. Dip pens and Brushes aren’t king. Many many artist use other mediums. Harsh black lines where once needed for limited black and white printing process but are no longer needed. Find the way you like presenting a comic the most and just do it like that. Blade of Immortal for instance used pencils and wash. The comic “Please Tell me Galko Chan” uses markers. Stop thinking about how you think you should be offering your final results and just go for the one you like the most.
Traditional VS Digital – Just use whichever you like, or both. Some folks print out blue line sketches from digital sketching and ink traditionally then scan it back in. Others draw each panel on its own 8×11 page, scan and assemble. These are tools for your results. Nothing more.
Script & Thumbnails – Some people like a good hard script and others like a loose outline developing dialogue while drawing. How you tell a visual story is up to you and what works best but you’ll only find comfort with effort, experimenting and practice.
Photo Tracing – Top artist trace photos. Photo’s they usually take themselves. Manga is HUGE on this. Inio Asano (Solanin, Dedede Destruction) throws photo’s into high contrast, prints that out and reworks them to feel inked. The final result gives a near realistic feeling with some ink grit to it. A lot of background work is lightboxed.
Assistants – Big comics are made by many people. Weekly manga, same deal. Needing help is not shameful nor is it “wrong” or “cheating”. You are working toward results. That is what matters.
And many more…
I haven’t even really covered general concepts like creating face guides to remind yourself what your characters look like, (I should know them by heart!) or even just using figurines for poses (I should know them by heart!).
Keep in mind every single time you prevent yourself from getting results and remind yourself that only YOU are privy to the magic behind the scenes. Just because you use tools and tricks that seem less magical for your end doesn’t mean you aren’t creating something people truly love and cherish!
Thanks for reading!
