Sketch Analysis

I often get asked what materials I use and how about I go using them.  I rarely work 100% using digital software as I generally prefer to at least sketch out preliminary ideas in pencil and ink.  It's probably the lack of confidence or knowledge I have in Photoshop for example to start sketching from the get go digitally but it's just something about a pen or pencil that feels right for me....

So now I'll start my first proper post, hopefully someone will find what I write here useful...

I usually doodle and scribble down rough thumbnails and further ideas on the same page/paper I'm working on like the example above shows.  I like to jot down ideas on the fly just in case I wanted to incorporate any later on in the process.  Knowing me if I didn't do this I'd just forget about them.  With almost all my work ending up digitally I don't really care about spoiling my traditional pieces so I often just draw and scribble around the picture I'm working on.

For example I had the idea of adding a futuristic set of shades to her later in Photoshop with the idea of rendering them slightly translucent so her eyes would be visible through.  I drew the rough shape next to her which can be cut and painted later in PS.

On this piece I sketched her out in pencils, nothing fancy just a few H grade ones that lay around my home.  I use both mechanical drawing pens and felt tip markers to achieve the thick dark line-work.  The grey values are marker pens which I smudge with my fingers on occasion.

I always scan in my work directly into PS in grey-scale, no need for 3rd part scanning software to get in the way.  Colours and tints are always added digitally.  I will sometimes use different colour pencils and pens If I can't find any black ink but this doesn't really matter as the scanned in image will be saturated.