OLD MAN progress
Or "why does he use a red pencil instead of grey lead?"
I wanted to give you a peek at my process for this update.
Above is a raw scan of a completed panel for my backup story in Old Man Rufus. If you look closely, that there are red pencil marks visible here, particularly around the foot and face. This is because I use red mechanical pencil leads (some artists use blue).
The reason for this is because I never have to rub out / erase those marks with the way I prepare my artwork.
And the reason is, when I take this art into photoshop (as a colour scan), I can use the BLACK AND WHITE adjustment to make the red and magenta disappear. But you’ll see how this also removes some of the opacity of the black ink, revealing a lot of the pen strokes of the Unipin fineliners I’ve used. This is no good, as I want nice crisp blacks for my art.
But I can fix this too, with the LEVELS adjustment, I can darken those back to full black, and also brighten the page so the whites are nice and clean too.
I wouldn’t be able to do this if I used graphite / grey lead, because to photoshop, these just appear as a shade of black, and it can’t distinguish them from the inks. So any adjustment to remove the pencils, would remove some of the ink marks as well.
I don’t know if this make my process any easier to understand, but it does work for me. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters - do what works for YOU.
It’s art, there’s no right or wrong way to do it.
-Daz