For my latest graphic memoir story, The full circle of fandom, I was inspired to go beyond the iPad, and experiment with analog materials. I drew the previous two stories, The band and Yoga and creativity, on my iPad using the wonderful Procreate app. But this time, I was ready to try something new, and to push myself further with my art style.
When making the previous stories, I realised how much the style looked like a collage. After I published them, I experimented with recreating them using physical materials. But this turned out to be terribly time-consuming and unexciting, since I’d already published the iPad version.
So for this next story, I decided that I would take the time to use paper, pencil, paint, scissors, and glue to create the finished product. Here’s how I did it.
Writing the story
Once I decided to write about my Drew Barrymore fandom experience, the first step was to collect my notes, thoughts, memories, and photos.
Luckily, I had made a head start on this when I was preparing to go on my friends Anne and Ashley’s How Do You Drew podcast. So I had a rough timeline of memorable moments in my Drew journey.
Next, the process of deciding what gets left in and what’s removed. I focussed on the moments that were most important to tell the story, both in words and visually.
I know that I will make changes to the text right up until the very end, so I don’t worry about getting the words perfect at this point.
Sketching on the iPad
Next, I open up the trusty Procreate app on my iPad. It’s a really versatile and popular app, and is where I create most of my digital art.
Even though I had decided to create the finished comic in physical form, I wanted to do the initial sketches, layouts, and colour choices on the iPad. It’s convenient to be able to play with layers, experiment with colours, and easily erase lines.
A sidenote about iPad art
The iPad is really convenient for creating art. It’s portable, takes up far less space than a sketchbook and art supplies, and is flexible.
However, art created on its flat screen also has a flat appearance.
To combat that, many artists use textured brushes and overlay texture images. I do this as well, but I’m also reluctant to use these to try to replicate actual, real-life art materials.
I don’t want to create “skeuomorphic art.” The finished product of an artwork owes a lot to the materials it was created with. I want to be true to those materials, to use them to their fullest potential without pretending they’re something else.
So, I’m always weighing up these considerations when making iPad art.
I start with loose thumbnails, which are the quickest and easiest way to map out the pacing and structure of the overall story.
Then, I move on to sketching out whole panels, redrawing lines and adding in layers of colour.
When I was in Fiji, I took a lot of photos of beautiful tropical flowers. A photo of a bougainvillea inspired the colour palette for the comic. I was thinking of vibrant colours for something related to Drew, but also she has talked about liking bougainvilleas.
This provides a subtle connection between form and substance that no viewer would pick up on, but for me it signalled care about the subject of the story.
I also drafted captions and speech balloons on the iPad, and continued to draw, tweak, and reorder until I had 15 panels I was happy with.
I was ready to move to analog.
Printing on watercolour paper
I’d been wanting to try printing on watercolour paper for some time. That way, I could finalise the linework digitally, then print and add watercolour paint.
Since I already had the nearly-finished product digitally, this seemed like the perfect project to try it with.
I bought two packs of watercolour paper that were suitable for my laser printer: one smooth and one medium.
I did some test prints, but ultimately I was disappointed in the quality of the lines. The paper was fine, but the lines came out with a kind of graininess — no doubt caused by the toner landing on the textured paper. They didn’t look organic at all, but rather just like a poor-quality print. Damn.
Someday, I’d like to try this method using an inkjet printer (or perhaps just a better-quality laser printer?), but for now, I was going to have to do this the long way.
So, I printed out the frames on their own, and for the rest of the lines I printed onto regular paper, then traced them onto watercolour paper.
Tracing with pencil and paint
I was keen to try out my new Studio Ghibli art set. So I used the included 2B pencil for tracing, and the Holbein Artists’ Watercolour Paints for the colour.
I mixed the green background from three colours, but the bright pinks, purples, and oranges were straight from the tube. Serendipitously, they were a perfect match for the bougainvillea colours I had sampled on the iPad!
I painted a green wash all over the panels, then painted the other elements in the colours I had designated on the iPad. Then, I got out my scissors and glue and recreated each panel’s collaged effect, using… actual collage!
Scanning and adding text
The last step was to scan in each page, then crop and add text in Photoshop.
I briefly considered printing the text captions and speech balloons onto the watercolour paper, but after seeing the quality of those prints I reconsidered.
Traditionally, comics are hand-drawn and coloured, then the text is added digitally later. So I explored the same technique for my own work.
I actually created a font of my own handwriting in Calligraphr, which is a huge time-saver. True to form, I tweaked the words right up until the final stages!
Then, the comic was done and uploaded to this blog.
Thanks for reading! As a final bonus, here’s the actual photo of me with Drew:
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