Hand-drawn to Digital

In response to Tara's comment on a previous post, I thought I'd explain how I move from hand drawn to digital images.

Top-left is my original rough drawing. I do these in my journal. For this one I was basically just recording a dream or an idea so I draw from memory, that is, I didn't bother using reference images. Often the original drawing never gets past this phase.

Sometimes I'll scan my drawings, open them up in Photoshop and use them to trace another line drawing on top, on a different layer. That is what I did in this case, top-right. Because I've only drawn on the top layer, I now have a transparent background (which looks white because I have a white layer underneath).

Sometimes I just keep the original pen drawing (rather than tracing over it on a different layer) by selecting and deleting the background - leaving the penned lines behind. I then clean it up by erasing the scraggy bits. In both cases I end up with a line drawing with no background - visualise an Artline or biro pen drawing on a transparent plastic sheet (remember the old overhead projectors?)

Now I can add a new background on a layer underneath the line drawing, and another on top of that to colour in different sections, staying inside the lines (bottom-left). Bottom-right is 3 layers - one for the purple background, one that contains the colour for the woman, and the line drawing on top.

I can also manipulate the image in various ways like changing the colour of the woman, and adding in a pattern I 'borrowed' from the internet. (I would normally create my own designs for that).

The image below uses a 'Clipping Mask' to make sure the pattern is only laid over the figure.

Photoshop was originally designed to edit and manipulate photos - as the name suggests. But it is still the program of choice for most digital artists, even though there are lots of other drawing and painting programs available now - like Manga Studio, Corel Draw and Procreate for iPads.

You can create very complex drawings with dozens of layers in Photoshop (and I have) but this is just a basic intro. If you are curious and want to know more - just Google 'digital drawing in Photoshop' or something similar. You'll find hundreds of YouTube tutorials.