Illustration

Over the past week, I've been working on an illustration, using a large number of my own characters as a crowd scene.

Firstly, I drew all the characters on an A3 sheet of paper, using pencil skeletons to ascertain the character's positions and poses, before inking them in pen. As you can see, the inking process went through a few hiccups, and there were also a few extra versions of the piece that did not reach completion sue to smudging. These extra attempts taught me not to ink the way I usually draw, which is in a somewhat chaotic manner, starting wherever I feel is the most convenient. However, while doing this, usually I will end up having to rest my arm on parts I've already drawn. This is fine on quick drying biro, or pencil, but with ink pens such as the one I used to ink this, it causes smudging.

The above photo was taken with a camera, as I did not have access to an A3 scanner. However, a photograph like this is not as high quality as a scan would have been. That meant that I had to carefully fix the linear, so that it would be clearer.

I realized while I was trying to fix the linework that there was a problem. If one side of the linework looked good, the other side would either look too dark or too light. To combat this, I created a copy of the linework layer and used gradient mapping on each. On one, I set the gradient map so that one side looked right, and on the second I used gradient mapping so that the other side looked good. After that, I deleted the dark section on one layer, set them up so that the overlapping made the complete image look good, before combining the layers.

After doing this, I thought to begin coloring it. However, the computer I was on had a difficult to use mouse, and all the other computers in college were taken. So I did some preliminary colorings, not bothering to keep it tidy, as I intend to finish coloring it at home.

My targets for the Easter holidays are:

• Finish coloring and shading the illustration.
• Start the writing for the college modules that I will have to hand in the week after Easter.
• Look into Illustration Friday, and it's prompt.