…is not really a workspace. It’s where I sit and draw, so I suppose it’s a workspace of some sort? Yes.
My television set up:
- I like background noise. I’m a television/movie junkie, so I love watching stuff while I draw. It provides a nice distraction as I work, so that I’m not just totally freaking out over the drawing.
My tools of the trade:
- White clipboard. My mother found this for me a long time ago at a thrift store. It used to have a small pillow attached to the bottom, but a seam ripped and the beads fell out, so I ended up simply removing the bottom. I don’t have a drawing desk in my room for lack of space, so this is the steadiest surface I have. Plus, my eyesight takes a while to adjust and focus sometimes, so I have to lean in super close for detail.
- Strathmore smooth Bristol is my main drawing paper. I prefer it since my scanner is just a regular all in one printer/scanner/fax, so it doesn’t give me as good of a scan as I’d like. Because of that, textured papers and the like don’t scan well, so super smooth paper it is. I also just like the way pencils and ink flow on it.
- Drawing utensils! I love mechanical pencils because they always have a sharp edge. I use a Pentel mechanical pencil filled with regular lead for rough sketching. The white pencil is a Zebra Tect 2Way shaker pencil! You shake it to advance the lead! I use my blue lead in this pencil. If I’m inking, I’ll use a Copic Multiliner and Pentel ink brush. Also, I love the Pentel Clic Eraser. The eraser is soft and having it in a pen form gives me better control than a block eraser. I do have a block style eraser, but sometimes I erase too hard and crumple the paper! So I try not to use it too much unless it’s a big space.
- Bamboo Wacom tablet. I bought this a couple of years ago, and I’m sure there’s been a million models since then, but this one does what I need it to do, and I’m quite happy with it! All my digital coloring is done with this and Photoshop CS2.
When I was taking some classes at community college, I used to get a lot of flack for being way too slow in Life Drawing. I was always used to taking my time and making things as detailed as possible. I was forced to abandon that way of art and learn how to draw quicker, faster lines so I could keep up with the poses I was given. Now I’m finding I wish I could find a happy balance between the two, where I’ve got fluid lines full of detail. It’s kind of why I had switched to just doing works in blue pencil, because I could get more detail out of it, but lately I’ve been wanting to do some inked works, in a comic/manga style.
I’m always interested in learning new techniques and ideas from other artists. I try and implement them in my own works; whatever is successful for me, I keep and try to perfect the technique, whatever doesn’t, I just stop doing it and move on to the next thing.
Today, via
Becky Cloonan’s Twitter, she had a link to
Vera Brosgol's blog where she demonstrated inking on Vellum over her rough sketches. It sounds really interesting! Maybe worth a try?
New drawing! Still playing around with inking. I feel like my lines are harsher when I ink as opposed to when I leave it in blue pencil then desaturate it to black. I might have to bite the bullet and buy a desk to start drawing on.
