First edu work "inked" in Painter

Well, I have done two books now that were "inked" in Painter 11, and then printed out on watercolor paper, and then greytone washes applied: Jason et la Tortue des Bois and The Mystery of the Missing Luck. The first I also did a color cover in this manner, but the color was sploshed haphazardly over the black ink lines. The second was done in a more traditional style, with the "coloring" closely following the shapes in a "3D" manner. The first was done with a Croquil Pen brush variant and the second with a Real 2B Pencil brush variant. Both brushes are custom sizes I made to mimic my traditional professional work, by opening up a previously completed work and then trying to find a similar Painter 11 brush, by trial and error, and then saving it as a custom variant.

Now I had 9 illos in full colour to do for a grade 8 textbook, in my traditional style. I normally have VERY light pencil lines transfered by tracing onto my watercolor paper and then add the line work at the very end in a rather loose manner in 4B graphite lead. I decided to do the pencil lines in Painter as I had for the Missing Luck book, print them out and then color in on top. I wasn't sure how this would go: if my paints (Rotring Artistcolor acrylic inks) would be transparent enough to go over the printed pencil lines so it didn't show that the lines were beneath the color, and if it would simply look good.

But the new trad sketch on tracing paper/ digital final lines on a layer/ print on watercolor paper/ colour in with brush and ink on watercolor paper/ scan in final work to send to client method really cuts out days of tracing and transfering, so I thought I'd give it a go.

So here is how it went: First, the sketch I sent to the client: which was done in .5mm 2H pencil lead on tracing vellum and scanned in.

When it was approved, I imported it into Painter and saved as a Riff file, added a layer ("Painter Lines") to draw on and a layer ("white") to block out the underlying sketch so I could check my line work and also drop all the layers and save as my final line work:

I found that the line work is perhaps not as loose as when I am drawing over a finished colored drawing, probably because I knew that these lines would define my color shapes, rather than just compliment them. I also found that when I lighten up on the stylus, the pencil line in Painter goes lighter but not necessarily narrower... in a regular sharpened pencil lead, you can make a line that starts and ends with sort of a point tapering off, and pressing down it goes thicker. In Painter I found it goes lighter with less pressure, and if you hold the stylus up it goes narrower, but not to a point, more to a blunt ending the size of your brush. I wonder if this can be changed? In the "minimum size" setting of the brush perhaps? But I'm still pretty happy with the line work.

I printed it out and colored it. Somehow I think it looks "neater" and "crisper" than my traditional work. Perhaps as I am coloring in very clear lines instead of light traced lines? Here is the raw scan (you can see the paper color and texture):
I scanned it into Photoshop as a psd, and in Photoshop is where I do all the adjusting.

Finally I got to fix things like the fact that I reached across my wet drawing to type in something in my computer (I push my cintiq back on my desk and had my keyboard in front of it, and my drawing closest to me) and dragged my sleeve across the teacher's hair (used to be a big prob to do something like this in trad. work that wasn't submitted digitally). I knocked out the white background by selecting with the magic wand tool and subtracting things it grabbed I didn't want. I thought it might keep the colors closest to the original to do this instead of adding a "levels" adjustment layer, making the paper color "pure white". But perhaps it makes the colors "duller"? And I just dropped out the white highlight in the eyes, and nothing else that is "white" in the actual drawing, like the white shirts and pants. I used to always adjust the levels to drop out the background, but some clients said the colors were too light (ie reds came out pink, faces came out too "pink" and not "peach" enough).

I'm pretty happy with the results. I haven't heard back from the client yet.

Here's an image I did traditionally from the Grade 6 book of the same textbook series:


And you can compare the two in this close-up comparison. Here you can see the pencil looks very similar in color and density, though I think there is more variety in the line in the non-digital version (right side), and you can see how lines can end in a "point" instead of fading into a blunt ending like on the left Painter version:

Do you think that the right hand image is "brighter" since I adjusted the levels on the scan to knock out the background paper color instead of just deleting it around the painting as in the left hand side? hmmm. Anyone have any tips for making your whites "white" when working on watercolor paper and scanning it in?

Well, I think it was overall a complete success.
To cap it off, here is another image from the same Grade 8 project:


Hmmm, looking at that as a thumbnail on the page, I do think that keeping the scanned color is maybe a mistake, that it looks a bit "old" and "dull" compared to the brighter "brightness boosted" older Grade 6 artwork... "nostalgic" isn't a descriptive I think Grade 8 textbook publishers are going for. I'll see what the client thinks. Easy to remedy "levels".

Well, there you go. First educational project done with help of the Cintiq and Painter 11. yay! Delivered a week before deadline. Even better.
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Five minutes later: here are the two illos from this project with a levels layer added to make the paper read as "white"... to compare and see if they look better...





Leave a comment and tell me what you think...
thanks so much!