Material Compensation

Digital or Traditional? The battle rages on... Until now.

Hi. Last week I shared this drawing and said that it inspired me to draw like that with more stuff. And I have! I just haven’t had time to finish said drawings to a measure that I find satisfactory. This one, however, was for work, so I colored it two different ways.

Aha! In my genius foresight I scanned it before a colored pigment touched the page! (Micron fineliner .08)

Instead of blaspheming with Watercolor per usual, (indeed, I am a savage that regularly and intentionally uses watercolor on drawing paper) I determined that my alcohol markers had enjoyed a protracted recess from my abuse and used them to color this fiend.

Reminder that pink undertones are badass. (Copic and Blick brand alcohol markers)

And later took a whapplecrack at coloring the same drawing digitally, without doing much cheating aside from a little line coloration. I wanted to give the same effect using two different coloring techniques.

Use a fucking Screen layer every now and again, will you?!

Balancing the pros and cons here is an interesting little drunken stagger.

Let’s take the obvious point, getting a glow effect digitally is easier and simpler than doing it using trad media. That value control, I’m still working on it. The play of light and shadow is something even master painters experiment and challenge themselves with until they draw. their. last.* I’m nothing of the sort, but can tell you that, especially with markers, it’s tricky to decide what exact hue and value should represent a surface in its grades of shadow. The markers are fun when you’ve got a super saturated and concentrated light source like that blobby hoobledoo of Lazer Frequency snarling off of my man’s hand. Time to pick out a bright pink and treat the rest like it’s in a bit of shadow…

The problem I have with digitally coloring line art is that… You have to god damn scan in the drawing and crop it and and adjust the levels and isolate the lines and man it’s just so tedious. When ya scan something, you feel like it should be DUNZO. Right? But It’s also my second favorite way to color once it’s all in there.

TLDR: No media is better than another.** Tried and true advice here is select the right tool for the job. In this case, a non-finnicky concept/vibe drawing, media don’t matter much. No background, no context, just putting down a quick vibe. Both of these took maybe around 15 minutes to do, and both do the job. But a cover might demand a more traditional look, or a page of panels might be better off having more flexibility. Step back, consider your options, try to picture the work dressed in each. Then, after asking yourself a galaxy of questions to deduce the perfect solution, go with your gut.

If you’re hungry for a result that kicks ass, it won’t lead you astray.

PS: Moleskine sketch paper is absolutely ASS for every coloring method I have tried under the sun, just look at what they did to my poor Mitch B. If you ink on Moleskine sketch paper for some demented reason, color it digitally.

That’s lined with waterproof WN ink that had been dry for 27 hours!

*I stared that pun in the face and said, ‘fuck you, I’m doing it’, my breath and heart rate quickening as I typed.

**Notice how I said MEDIA, and not MATERIAL. Because I feel like an absolute goon for using Winsor Newton dry pans for seven years after trying just one single MnM mini sized gooblet of Daniel Smith semiwet watercolors. CHEAP ART SUPPLIES ARE IN FACT CHEAP FOR A REASON