Project One (con't): drawing Wally

As I mentioned, I enjoy drawing in SketchBook Pro more so than Photoshop or Corel Painter.  My preference is based on ease of interface and not having to make a dramatic production out of every re-sizing, erasure, realignment, etc.

That said, SBP is limited in comparison to Photoshop or Painter insofar as transforming an image or in the sheer volume of brushes... digital applications of color and texture... and effects.

It's an acceptable trade-off if your objective is to produce a lot of drawings in a hurry. 

A note on file formats.  SBP saves in TIFF files; Corel Painter saves in a proprietary format; ArtRage - another interesting art software - saves in its own format.  And none of these play well with the other softwares... except that all of them save in, recognize, and export Photoshop files.

Photoshop, you see, is the "common currency" of art software or at least it is so far as I am aware.

When "inking" Wally (giving him a finished look) I started in SketchBook Pro.  I especially like SBP's Steady Stroke feature.  In conjunction with a thick/thin brush or their good ol' # 4 pencil, Steady Stroke offers a really professional look.

But I'm also interested in some of the brushes available in ArtRage.  They have an ink pen call "thick/thin" that handles pretty well.  That's the one I finally used for this rendering of Wally (notice I changed the front brim of his fedora):

I like the thick boldness of the line and the way Wally is spelled out pretty non-ambiguously.  I mean, could Wally ever be ambiguous?  Well, I suppose he could if you drew him with a thin, never varying line.  The thick/thin line on the other hand makes him stand out a bit from the page.

I tried it several different ways but I think I'll use this one.  Now, that raises a question a few of you may have: are we going to use a heavily lined Wally on our Golden Book cover?  Is that the "traditional look" they strive for?

The answer, of course, is "no."  But not to worry.  I'm even going to color Wally in with flat, unvarying colors which, in conjunction with those heavy black outlines, will look very much like a hand-drawn cartoon.  But that won't be the final product.  Oh no, trust me on this.  We're going to start out as colors behind a black-lined figure... but that will change with the introduction of Photoshop.

I like starting simple and then building up from there.  And I don't build much.  I like things to stay pretty simple.  Stay tuned.