HOME
Gary draws, inks, colors and lays out a cover illustration for On the Shore magazine.
I was personally chosen by the editor of On the Shore magazine to draw, ink and color a special cover for their April 2001 issue. This is not surprising, because I am the editor of On the Shore magazine. We don't generally have a budget for original artwork covers and I always use clip art or take digital pictures and work something out with type and graphics. This month I was free of freelance duties, had a great idea, and thought I could afford to plug some extra time into something eye-catching. Please note that this is the system I use for magazine illustrations. There are plenty of places, on the web and in print, that can tell you how to set up comic book pages for separate artists, inkers and colorists.
I started with a pencil sketch that I refined to near perfection. Although I usually make some on-the-fly improvements when I ink, I've found that the tighter the pencils, the better the final product, since I can concentrate on inking (not drawing) when I reach that stage. I draw on Strathmore drawing paper, medium weight, 14 x 17, measured to correspond to the dimensions of the final project. Don't accept projects when you don't know the final size, find some way to chase that size down, because awkward cropping can wreck the balance of your illustration. Leave room on the outside edges for "bleeds" (where the illustration flows off the page). Printers usually only need 1/8 inch for bleeds (final size), but I've found it's better to have plenty of dead space around an illustration to work with (more dead space on the left and right of this sketch would have made it easier to work with at the pasteup stage). Draw, ink and color the dead space just as carefully as you would the middle of the illustration, because you never know what will end up showing.
I ink on Strathmore Bristol, smooth, 14 x 17 with crowquill pens (generally a 513) and a Rapidograph for the straight lines. Real inkers (like Scott Rosema) use a brush for that great thick-thin line look. I've been experimenting with a Tin-Tin style outline style, as opposed to a Jeff Smith (Bone) brush style or a Robert Crumb (Zap Comics) crosshatch style. I did the crosshatch style for many years and finally figured I was using crosshatches to hide areas that really should be worked on more to improve them. I really admire artists who can define a form with a minimal line and not a lot of shading or crosshatching. Simple really is more difficult. When drawing for others to ink you would go right on the Bristol with a very light pencil (you wouldn't believe how light!) and the inker inks on the board over the pencils. I've found it easier when inking my own projects to tape a pencil drawing to the back of the board and ink over a light box.
I then scan the inked drawing into Photoshop (greyscale), adjust the exposure settings for the clearest reproduction of the lines, adjust to final size, paste into the K (black) channel of a CMYK photoshop tif, and add the black line to an extra channel in case I end up messing up the black channel while coloring quickly. Don't trust the colors you see on the screen, unless you have one of those incredibly expensive screens no artist can afford, and you calibrate it regularly. I have a printed chart I trust to tell me what the colors are going to do. Don't color too subtly. Everything from your Photoshop dot gain settings to your home printer's settings to whether the printer running the press at the magazine had his lunch yet can effect your color. The color should compliment the drawing, not overpower it. Job one is to separate foreground, middleground and background. Note the Photoshop filters in the trees and bushes to simulate leaves. I planned these from the beginning. The trick to Photoshop filters it to plan them to look natural, not tacked on the the illustration.
Special effects are added after everything looks right. It's much harder to go in after you've already removed the black line to change colors, gradients, etc. - you might as well start over. Most of the time you are coloring without disturbing the black line, building grey from CM and Y. Here I removed the black line from the house and farthest foliage and replaced it with a grey/green. This really punched the bird forward (remember, foreground, middleground, background).
Here is the final cover, cropped down with the cover logo and type added. I obviously didn't need to be as careful with the top of the house, but I'm glad I did. You never know what is going to be cropped. The check cleared - on to the next project!