Our illustrations, which have appeared separately and also in our "Candy Smile Love" visual book (August 2010), are really "mixed media" works. Some artists create beautiful CG work using only a computer and a graphic tablet, but we've always preferred the hand-drawn look of our pencil illustrations. So our working method consists of making a pencil sketch, scanning it, then doing the clean-up, colouring and background work in Photoshop.
This tutorial will be divided into five main sections:
(1) Sketching and drawing
(2) Scanning and digital clean-up
(3) Base colouring
(4) Shading
(5) Backgrounds
Our techniques and working methods have been compiled from tips and tricks we've picked up from various places during the creation of our artworks. They are the methods that work for us, and for our particular type of design. There are probably faster, easier or smarter ways to do what we do, and we're certainly not suggesting that this tutorial offers the only way (or even necessarily the best way) of doing things. Like an artist in any medium, you need to find a method that works for you. But we do hope that some of what follows over the coming weeks will be helpful.
The first point we'd like to make - and this is probably more important than any other - is that good CG artwork begins with good drawing skills. Practice, practice, practice...because if you don't start off with a good drawing, no amount of fancy CG or Photoshop skill is going to fix it. While it's possible to fix some obvious mistakes in your line art, add in missing lines, or change a shape here and there, the basic form and composition of your picture has to be there from the beginning.
So draw, draw, draw - and then follow the rest of this tutorial when you're ready.
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