My Process and Tools
This page is intended to give an overview of my general process and the tools I use most frequently. Of course these things can vary slightly from project to project, but this is what I’ve come to settle on over the years of developing my craft, hunting for art supplies and trying out different ways of working.
Tools
iPad Pro with Procreate
Mechanical pencil (HB)
Tombow Mono Zero eraser
A2 size light box
Stonehenge smooth vellum finish paper, 250gsm, 100% Cotton
Fine liners, mostly Rapidographs these days
Pentel Aquash brush pens. I use a few with India ink and distilled water in various ratios.
India ink
White gouache
Process
Ideas
So before we get into the physical part of the process, the first thing is of course the mental part. There must be an idea before there is an actual project. Ideas can come in different ways. They can come while going for a walk, reading, meditating, seeing something beautiful/cool, working on another project or just doodling. Sometimes the idea is simply an image that must be made, a mood to be conveyed, not necessarily with a specific intellectual meaning. Sometimes the idea comes to me in form of a concept, such as “I should make a drawing about X!” and then the image making part follows. Sometimes it’s just a title that sounds cool!
The point is that ideas can come at any moment, like a flash of enlightenment, a sudden realization. I have no specific idea generating methods, simply because I have never had a shortage of ideas. I think it’s important to be interested in various topics and to learn and pursue those subjects. Observe the world around you, and make sure you have plenty of downtime. This means: don’t spend every second looking at a screen. Give your mind the time to wander. Your desires, your knowledge, your observations will synthesize into new ideas automatically without needing to force anything.
Once I have an idea I immediately write it down or make a simple quick sketch. This doesn’t need to be anything fancy. The point is just for me to remember the idea. By committing it to matter, if in a simple way, I don’t have to worry about forgetting it, and the idea can go back to the subconscious to make room for other ideas.
If I find an idea too vague, I might do more research on the topic, look for reference to inspire me further or do a word association thing to bring related concepts into the piece. I make sure that I’m actually excited about the idea, otherwise it’s hard to push the image to finish. With every project there’s a roller coaster of emotions, ups and downs, so you better be ready to slay some dragons to see it done.
I make sure all my projects are properly organized, so once I’ve written a note or made a sketch I put them into a separate folder. Everything gets synced to Google Drive so I can reach any of my projects’ files anywhere I am. This means I can add notes or images and work from anywhere. Love it.
Digital drawing
Now that I have a sketch, I’ll get it into Procreate if it isn’t already in there. The bulk of the work happens at this stage. The reason for that is that digital is amazing for being able to change things around quickly and easily. I’m able to try different compositions, different poses and work out problem areas. There is absolutely no pressure and total freedom to create exactly the image that I want. I’ll make sure that I work out the entire drawing at this stage so that all that is left after this is to simply do it again but with traditional media. I’ll gather and use as much reference as I need to to bring the drawing up to my standards. If I can’t find the ref I need online, I’ll shoot it myself and use myself as a model.
I cannot stress how much I love Procreate. It works so well and gets close to the traditional look while having the advantages of digital. And being on the iPad Pro, together with cloud storage it allows me to work from anywhere.
Transfer
Once the digital drawing phase is done, I’ll print the drawing. Usually this means using Photoshop to print it in sections, since my drawings are bigger than my A4 printer can handle. I’ll tape the parts of the mosaic together so that I have the digital drawing. Next I’ll tape this to my light box and put the prepared (usually this means hand-dyed with a gouache wash) Stonehenge paper on top. Now the process of tracing starts. I do this with my mechanical pencil. This is a very boring part, but it’s super important to get right, so I don’t rush things. I spent so much time getting the drawing right in Procreate and if I now do a sloppy transfer then I’m just throwing away work. Once I’m satisfied that everything is there I’ll take it off the light box and clean the drawing up where necessary.
Traditional drawing
Using the Micron fine liners I’ll go over the pencil lines, making sure to draw and not trace. This kind of means using the lines as a guide and not as gospel, allowing for happy accidents and such to happen and putting in additional information. As much as I try to get the whole drawing worked out in Procreate, when you’re working with traditional media it’s a different story. Whatever the drawing needs, it gets.
While I’m doing this, I’ll also start putting in some India ink washes with the Aquash brush pens. This step requires me to think somewhat ahead about which areas I want linework, which areas dotwork, and which areas pure wash. I’m careful with this because doing it well can create a great sense of depth. If not done well the drawing can look pretty flat.
I also need to think ahead about where the white gouache is going to go. Usually this isn’t a very large surface area since I use it for highlights and such. Usually I color the paper in such a way that it’s a high midtone, with the gouache providing the highlights and the ink providing the darker shades. Depending on the piece and the paper this scale can vary, of course.
So there you have it. This is my general process, arrived at after many trials and trying many things. Of course this isn’t set in stone. Art shouldn’t be an assembly line business, so this is a guideline and I keep plenty of leeway to just have fun and lose myself in the work.