HOW TO: Scanning and Lines!

I am the type of artist that generally lets the piece decide what medium it wants to be. This pretty much means I work in array of 2-d mediums, though all of my works tend to be on the more illustrative side. One of my favorite ways to work has to be with Photoshop. I can usually sketch out what i want on a good old fashioned piece of paper and then I usually do the rest in Photoshop. My way is fairly simple and doesn't require a whole lot of hassle, which is why I want to share it.

This  first post, like stated, will just get you started with the actual scanning and line work. I feel as though the coloring itself can be a bit more tedious and time consuming. I want to give it full attention so I'm gonna save it for a later post.

Now lets start! Let's say you have a pretty awesome drawing that you want to take the extra time to digitally alter or color. Kinda like this one here:



Yeah that's pretty nifty but that's just a picture of drawing. Let's actually scan that bad boy (or girl, I'll leave the gender to you) I have a home scanner but if you do not library's and Kinko's/Fedex have some too but you usually have to pay for it.

Other scanners may vary but this is a fairly standard set up

For me and my home scanner, I set it for black and white photo and 300 dpi or above. You can usually go for a lower or higher dpi but 300 is usally a safe bet.

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OH YEAH. Now we're getting somewhere! But there's room for improvement. Lets do some touch ups in photoshop. Open it up directly in photoshop and make sure to go to Image > Image Size > make sure resolution is between 300-500 dpi. I generally like to work that high since you get cleaner results.

 

 

Here is what it'll look like.

Also as a side note, when you open up the scanned image in Photoshop it'll pop up in your layers as "Background" and will be locked. To fix this so you can alter the placement of the layer, simply just rename the layer! That easy! You'll have to do this if you continue with this style of coloring.

Looks odd now but it'll get better I promise.

First thing I do after this is touch things up. Though I always recommend you touch things up as much as possible BEFORE you scan it, sometimes it can't be helped. Plus, scanners can pick up other things besides your drawing that you don't want in it.

The cloak wasn't doin it for me and I have no idea what was going to be in her hand. A wand? Fishing pole? Giant chicken leg? You get the idea. Just because its there when you can it in DOES NOT mean it has to be there forever. You are God and your art is your minion. Make it dance. Or not. After your done editing it make a layer that will go under this one that's just a white fill.

The next part make a new layer and set it to OVERLAY. That's how the contours of my sketches become more contrast and color. You can do whatever color you want, black isn't the only line color in the world.

Here are my lines so far. Blue and some green. Experiment and see which colors fit the drawing.