Suuketchy

Tsu's Techniques

All of us have our own techniques and secrets in order to satisfy the designs of our artwork. Here, I will give out some techniques that I use for different types of drawings, ranging from a simple sketch to manga. They're not step by step instructions or anything. To put it simply, they're just tips that can hopefully help you with your own if you would like to take a knack at it.

Sketches:

Sketches aren't meant to show a lot of detail at the beginning. It starts out swiftly and roughly with a few marks here and there on the picture. A good idea to keep in mind is to start out light; it makes it so much easier for erasing mistakes. It should be like a silhouette, portraying a basic idea of what you want to create. From the sketch, that's when you can take it at a slower pace to add any precise details that you wish.

Detailed Drawings:

You can start out with a sketch or carefully etching in lines. I disagree with a lot of the art teachers when they say that you shouldn't make little scratching lines. It's a process of getting things precise and exact. In my opinion, etching is a safe way of getting a good outline. You can always turn back and trace over that etchy line to a solid one, right? Well, for detailed drawings it takes a lot of concentration and patience. If it helps, keep a stock of refrence photos just incase a certain line you want to draw comes in mind but doesn't really appear as you have intended on the paper.

Charcoal Pieces:

These are messy so you better have napkins with you! Not only to clean away the stains left behind, but also to smudge the charcoal in order to create shading effects. Take it easy with charcoal!!! What I usually do is rub a little bit on the drawing, smudge with the napkin, and repeat the process. Unless if you don't mind erasing messy smudges afterwards, don't go rushing in and coloring an area of your drawing with characoal. Note that a lot of the small sheddings are left behind. Take your time on charcoal. It is an effective tool for shading but it also takes practice.

Colored Illustrations:

A great idea if you want to color in your illustrations is to outline it in ink; well... unless if you use pastels or drawings something that's not anime-related, then you don't have to. Start with a light coat so you can have enough of the tone for integrating with other hues as well as applying shading. Pretty much as simple as that.

Manga:

Ahh... manga... the big toughie for me and most others. Before you start rushing in with that pencil and ink, PLAN OUT YOUR SCENES! It'll be much better if you plan ahead of time instead of sitting there, blowing your mind off on what you want to draw. You'll be experiencing the uses of different tools in manga; a lot of ink expecially. There's no option for rushing on a manga. You need your basic sketches drawn out and then outlining them in ink. And you need shading too to give a decent perspective of the characters and scenes to your readers. Keep alot of reference photo's with you. You'll find those in handy if you need to draw something like a building or scenery background.