This is the first video in the Draw with Brian series, a behind-the-scenes look at my illustration process while working on Derrick and Max’s Beach Adventure.
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Transcript
Hey, hello. I’m Brian Crowell, bdcrowell.com. I’m the author and illustrator of the children’s book Derrick the Dog, and this is my first video. I’m working on my next book, the illustrations for it, and I thought it might be fun to show you how the sausage is made. So let’s fire this guy up.
Alright, so this is ArtRage Vitae, which is basically ArtRage 7. I’ve been using ArtRage since I think version 3. I’ve used every version since then. I’ve paid for every version except, I think, version 5. ArtRage actually provided me a sample copy to do a review, so this is not sponsored by anybody. All the equipment I have and all the software I use, I paid for myself.
Let’s see… why don’t we work on this one today — Magician Sneaking Away. This is the follow-on image after this big battle that we had here. So we’ve got this tracing up here to help keep things consistent.
Real quick, let’s talk about equipment. For the first book, Derrick the Dog, I did most of the illustrations on a Wacom Bamboo — my first-ever tablet. I really love drawing digitally because you get neat things like layers that you can turn on and off. You don’t have to worry about making mistakes because you can just undo things instead of erasing. That means I can do my roughs in ink instead of pencil, and everything stays consistent.
So what am I actually using now? I went from the Wacom Bamboo to an XP-Pen — I think it was an Art Deco or something with “Deco” in the title — and then last Christmas I got a new XP-Pen Artist 22, which I love.
I’m actually set up in my living room now instead of my office, so I can be with the family. I’ve got this little craft table I picked up from Michael’s last Christmas, it was on sale for half price, and I put furniture movers under it so I can roll it around. If we’re watching TV, I can pull it back and kind of halfway watch TV while I draw, which is pretty nice.
I’ve also got this little shortcut remote that I really like. I’ve got different keys programmed into it, and little stickers on the keys so I remember what they do. That way I’m not always hunting for shortcut keys on the keyboard or digging through menus. I use it for things like saving, undo, redo, or resetting my canvas properties back to how I like them. I can also hide panels to get them out of the way, which is really nice.
The tablet I’m drawing on is the Artist 22. I know there are other options out there — Huion and things like that — but I kind of settled on XP-Pen and I like them.
So what do we have here? Like I said, this is the second image after the big battle. This is a nice wide two-page spread if we’re talking about a paper book, which is what I’m designing for. Then this will be a single-page spread, much more zoomed in on this part of the action.
First, let’s make sure we’re on the right layer. Let’s zoom in a little bit… maybe too much… alright. Let’s do a little work on Derrick here. These are my roughs, so they don’t have to be perfect. If it winds up being good, I can turn it into inks later. Right now we’re just getting things down.
He’s going to look pretty similar to the last image — not real happy that this battle is going on. Everybody’s fighting, and he doesn’t care for that. There’s a little bit of lag because I’m screen recording, which is taxing what this laptop can do. I just got this laptop — the last one wasn’t Windows 11 compatible. It was probably designed for Windows 7, which gives you an idea of how old it was. So this one’s newer and more powerful, but it may still be struggling a bit with everything going on.
I don’t know if you find this kind of stuff interesting — I do. I’m a big fan of Aaron Blaise from Creature Art Teacher. He’s a professional artist, trained, and I am not. I like watching him draw, and I actually subscribed to his site and picked up one of the lifetime memberships. I’m taking some lessons. The only actual art class I ever had was in junior high school, and I didn’t get much out of it. I’m self-taught, and sometimes I struggle a bit.
This is Derrick, the title character from the first book. His dog is Max. This is a dream sequence from the second book. The inspiration for Derrick and Max was Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. I really enjoyed those as a kid, and they were a big influence on my art style.
For this dream sequence, I wanted it to feel a little more Disney-esque — not up to Disney quality, obviously, but I did the best I could.
Let’s clean this line up here… thank you to the eraser tool. Oh — I hit the fill instead of the eraser. Let’s undo that. Love digital art.
A lot of people draw in Photoshop, which is weird to me because it’s not really a drawing app. I own Photoshop, but it never felt natural for drawing. ArtRage felt better to me because it mimics pen and paper, which is what I grew up with.
Alright, my roughs for Derrick are looking pretty good. Let’s work on the king. We’re going to wind up turning him around, and I don’t think he’ll be holding his arm up, so let’s make a new layer for him.
Because this is the second image in a series, we want to keep things consistent, which is why we’re tracing our own work. There’s nothing wrong with tracing — especially retracing your own work.
Right now he looks kind of angry, and I don’t think we want that. I want him to look more surprised. So let’s open the eyes up a bit, remove the angry eyebrows… yeah, that looks better. He’s got an impressive mustache — not quite Sam Elliott level, but it works.
Digital art is great because if something doesn’t work, you can undo it. Or redo it. You can take chances without worrying about erasing lines. I actually wrote a whole article on my website about why digital art isn’t cheating.
This is a rough, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Alright, now let’s think about the sword and shield. We’ll probably only see part of the sword because his arm will be down and most of it will be behind his body. So we’ll sketch that in on a new layer and rotate it into place.
That might look a little weird for a children’s book, so we may hide part of it. We don’t need to see the back hand anyway.
Now let’s zoom out. The magician was sneaking away, but after Derrick yells at everyone to stop fighting, the king might actually be a little angry. That’s something we can adjust later. For now, we’re focused on the king.
Let’s flip him around… there we go. All of the characters are going to be looking in the same direction, but that might be a video for another time.
Hey, thanks for sticking with me. I hope this was interesting. I know I like watching behind-the-scenes stuff and seeing how other artists work.
Until next time — thanks.
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