Discussion of Full Digital Workflow

So about a month and a half ago I finally got an iPad, and it has changed the output of my art greatly (like, I actually make art now!). Previously, I would pencil and ink my drawings traditionally, mostly on 8.5x11 card stock or printer paper (my scanner is the same size, and so that makes me only want to draw in that size lol), and then I would scan them and color them on my laptop in Clip Studio using my Wacom tablet. The issue with that was immense, and it’s why I didn’t make art with this frequency for years!

1. My computer is slow as shit, and so even getting the motivation to turn it on just to scan a drawing is so hard! If you look at the output I had in previous years before I got a scanner, where I would just take pictures of my art with my phone, I honestly did way more drawings, and I think it’s due to my using a computer to get high-res versions of my drawings that contributed to a mental block, actually making me create less art. Plus even emailing it to myself to be able to post from Instagram was a hassle, since it would take like five minutes for Chrome to load :(

2. My Wacom tablet was fucking TRASH. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t - maybe it was ANOTHER issue with my computer, but it had this thing where, if the mouse tried to approach the bottom half of the screen, it would wig the fuck out and screw up anything I was doing; I essentially had to hold it in a VERY SPECIFIC MANNER to get it to work appropriately sometimes, and if I budged from that spot even a little, everything got screwed up again. So just know - like any color art I made in the past several years before like September 16th utilized this very frustrating method, and so it made me want to use it less and usually only do flats, just because often the pressure sensitivity didn’t even work. So it’s a miracle I did ANY color art at that time.

So now, like, I have this iPad and the whole process is so streamlined that I don’t use any of those anymore for the purpose of art. BUT, I have been kind of noticing a weird thing with my art of late, where my process has shifted almost dramatically because of the freedom with which the iPad allows - for better or worse!

Oftentimes when working on a drawing, I’ll still start with pencils, but now I care quite a bit less about getting them 100% down before I start inking. This has a few ramifications. For starters, I end up having to (and also BEING ABLE TO) redo my inks if something looks wrong. For instance, on the two sleuth girls drawing, I had drawn, inked, AND COLORED the whole picture before I realized just how awful the girl on the left’s face looked (you can see it in these pencils). There was something very wrong with the shape of it, and with the size of her beret, and so I went back and redid inks and colors on it multiple times until I was happy with it (thankfully I DID get there!).

Or, on both of my recent drawings, I have included background elements in some way, and neither time had I really figured or planned them until I’d had the whole drawing inked. I knew I wanted the two smoking girls in a bathroom, but I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like until I finished the drawing and came up with the tile situation (which was partly inspired by inspecting the tile at the Rockaway train station in Brooklyn, and partly inspired by how Frank Miller would represent tile and brick in Sin City). On the sleuthing girls drawing, I didn’t have the idea for the paper floating around until I had inked and colored both girls; I took that idea from Will Eisner, who said (and I’ll obviously agree) that it added a worldliness and atmosphere to a scene; the issue with my implementation obviously is that it shows that there’s wind, by why is the hair not moving on the head of the girl with the bob, or the jacket on the other girl? WHY??? Cuz I didn’t plan ahead, that’s why! I honestly just didn’t want to redraw those elements because they looked fine and HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE I WAS GETTING PAID FOR IT.

Because of all this, my workflow is actually LESS of a flow now, and more like a whole jumbled mess of me just figuring it out. Honestly that’s fine, at least so long as the technology is streamlined so that I don’t get frustrated just in getting to the point of even STARTING a drawing.

One of the other amazing things that digital has allowed me is the ability to test things out. Because my old Wacom tablet was basically broken, I never wanted to ink anything digitally, or to have to fix anything post-ink. But now with working fully digitally, I get to try different types of brushes (also slows me down, but at least it’s for a good reason), which I have always wanted to do! Honestly I don’t venture too much from the ones that I know I like (the Tapered Fenden’s Inker, the Gee Wiz Brush, and the Milli Pen), but even getting to try between those three gives me OPTIONS. So like here I’d actually started inking the sleuthing girls 1) before I even pencilled the second girl, and 2) with the Milli Pen, since it was immediately post-Smoke-Break Girlfriends. After I’d done it and woke up again this morning, I realized I would rather it have more volume, and so I went and used the trusty-ole Frenden’s Inker, instead! They obviously look similar, as they’re derived from the exact same pencils, but the Frenden brush allows for variance of line weight, which the Milli Pen does not!

Anyway, I am super happy to have the ability to so easily produce art as well as share it! The way I am going, I should likely have some new art super soon!