Digital Illustration with Rob Christianson

Hi everybody. I thought I'd include a little blurb about how I usually do my digital illustration:

First, I sketch. On paper. Don't be too shocked, anyone who wants to be a good illustrator needs to constantly be drawing. Doodling, sketching, it's all good. I draw first in pencil, then I go over my linework with a good black pen, one that won't smudge. After that, I lightly go over the entire drawing with a kneedable eraser to get rid of the pencil.

Second, scan. I put the drawing into the scanner, and typically scan at 300 dpi at full size. Once that drawing is scanned into the computer, I go to Photoshop.

Third, prep for colorization. Once the scan is loaded into Photoshop, I adjust my levels, brightness and contrast. My goal is to get as clean of a scan with no shadows or smudginess. Once that is acheived, I select the layer (cmd-A selects all) and I will float the art to a new layer using Cmd-Shift-J. Set this new layer's blending mode to Multiply (that's at the top of the layer pallette).

Fourth, colorize. I will create as many layers as I need to underneath my drawing, and use the marquee tool to block out areas to color. I prefer to use flat areas of color on separate layers, and add gradients to those from a lighter version of the same color, to transparent. That adds dimensionality to the work.

Once the coloring is finished, I may find areas of the sketch I don't want there anymore. Simply go to the top layer containing the "Multiply" version of the original sketch, and use the marquee tool to delete any extra linework or elements not used.

Always save a PSD version. Also output a JPG version for sharing with peers.

Post your JPG on your blog, on your Website, on other gallery sites around the internet such as HumbleVoice.com, DeviantArt.com, Flickr, etc.

In a nutshell, that's how I roll. ;)