Art & Story 90 – The Big Pencil

[private]This week we spend the majority of our discussion on penciling–that is to say, the preliminary drawings we do before taking them to final printable art. While we pencil using actual graphite and paper, I think our exploration easily applies to illustrators and cartoonists who work entirely digitally.

We break the discussion into the following areas of concern:

Penciling Theory

Form and structure

• Anatomy
• Draftsmanship
• Detail

Fluidity

• Gesture
• Acting
• Movement

Line

• Penciling for inks
• Type of line

Penciling Practical

Tools

• Blue line
• Graphite
• Digital Process
• Lightbox Process

Tightness

• Penciling for yourself
• Penciling for others
• Line/production values

Procedure

• 1st stage blocking
• 2nd stage blocking
• Final pencils
• Using a lightbox vs. doing all the art on one page

We refer here and there to some examples of our own pencils and inks:

• Equalizers of The Divide, page 1
• Equalizers of The Divide back cover
• The Cosmic Adventures of Gena Kranz, page 8 pencils
• The Cosmic Adventures of Gena Kranz, page 8 inks
• John Oxbow: Man Out of Time, page 19 pencils
• John Oxbow: Man Out of Time, page 19 inks
• WAR! pencils
• WAR! inks

Other links mentioned in this episode:

• Google Sketchup – A great resource for designing buildings and vehicles
• Art & Story Extreme!! – Our new daily podcast
• Art & Story 57 – The ep where we covered Thumbnailing, the step that precedes penciling for us.
• Art & Story 46 – Mark and I go deep into our process with lots of examples while talking about our comic, Switch Runners
• Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics From the Ground Up – A fantastic resource to help you with your environments in your comics

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