Draw with Brian #11 - Magician Sneaking Away 2: Inks 2

Brian returns to the “Magician Sneaking Away 2” illustration for another pass at the inks. He revises Derrick and the black knight, working through head angles, shoulders, facial details, and costume lines while demonstrating ArtRage’s paint-symmetry tool. It’s an honest look at the experimentation—and frequent use of Undo—that goes into refining an illustration.

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Attribution and source notes

This episode is part of Draw with Brian.

Transcript

Draw with Brian #11 - Magician Sneaking Away 2: Inks 2

Hey everybody, welcome to Draw with Brian. I'm Brian. Let's get into today's drawing.

Revisiting the Inks

All right, we've been working on the magician sneaking away, and the last time I said I thought the inking was done. I didn't figure it was actually done, because usually once I set it aside and come back to it, I find things I want to change. Got some of that now.

Let's see, what do we want to work on? So Derrick here—not thrilled with this. I think his shoulder would be a little farther back, not sprouting out the front of his chest. Also, not entirely sure if we'd be able to see his nose from this angle.

And I think our black knight here would be more turned this way. I think we're gonna be able to see both shoulders and probably not his nose, and maybe fix a little bit—flow that skull down into there a little better.

The king, though, not too bad. He is kind of more toward the side, though, which makes me think we'd be able to see a little more of his eye, maybe just the corner of it.

So, all right, we're already on the king ink. Seems like a good spot to start. Let's mess with that. The beautiful thing about digital art is you can play with it, and then if you don't like the way it turns out, you can always change it.

Let's see. Actually, I like that less. Yeah, we can definitely have that coming back. Oh no, let's think about him. We can certainly clean up that little straight mark there, though.

All right, let's let him be. There's the problem, right? I think I'm coming in here, playing with this stuff.

Reworking the Black Knight

Black knight ink. I'll tell you what, we're just going to make a second black knight ink layer. Let's set that layer name: Black Knight Ink 2.

Okay, let's come down here and kind of drop that opacity down some. All right, let's see. Head shape's not bad, but truthfully, I think his head's going to be a little more tilted. So that means what? That ear's going to come a little farther forward. Let's see what we come up with.

Also, not really digging this so much. Let's make sure we got Derrick's pen. Yes. Do we have black? All right, we've got black. Doesn't matter so much for the digital ebooks, but gosh, on the print books, you don't want to have a bajillion different, slightly different shades.

No, no, I don't know. Actually, let's take a quick peek at him. So, if we're turning a little more—tell you what, let's do this.

Using Paint Symmetry

And also, let me show you kind of a cool tool here. It's paint symmetry. Check this out. Paint symmetry.

All right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to say that's where his center line's going to be. Now watch this. I can get a perfectly even body lined up between the two. Love that tool.

All right, let's turn that off. All right. Now he is nice and even.

I think we're going to flow that up into the skull. Yeah, I kind of dig that a little better. Yeah, all right. Let's bring this hairline over a bit. Let's bring it down a little bit. All right, maybe not quite that far. It's not quite how his hair went. If we look at his hair, it's a little more angular there, wasn't it? So, down a bit, and then kind of to a point. Yeah. Okay.

Now, that's his hairline. But actually, his skull would have come down a little more like this—and with that. Zoom out a little there. Let's clean that up. Sometimes it helps to kind of zoom in and zoom out. Let's just hide that real quick. A couple of cleanups here.

I think at this point—I know that nose sticks out a ways—but I don't think we're going to see it. However, probably we'll see... And same thing with his nose. I think that's round enough. We're not going to see it, but we might still see a little bit. It's actually even more curvy, isn't it?

Now, I—excuse me. Now, Derrick is, you know, a special case. He's more of a comic-book character. But I don't think these guys... He did have an awful pointy chin, but he did not have any kind of facial hair there. Just the mustache. And he had the goatee and the mustache.

Working Out the Shoulders

All right. Okay. Now, shoulder-wise, shoulder-wise, shoulder-wise. I think we're going to see some shoulder here. Let's see. I think we're going to probably see a little shoulder here, right? And then I think we're going to see some—well, that looks like it's going behind his body. That wouldn't be right.

I think we're going to see a little shoulder here. Actually, if he's turned, we might just see a little shoulder here. Let's bring that up a little. Yeah. Okay. I dig it. Let's try cleaning that up and then see what we wind up with.

Okay, so you're going, and you're going. Let's see. All right. Well, let's go with that for now. Who knows how many iterations we'll go through before we get this chest right?

All right. But now, definitely, that shoulder would be farther forward, so we would be seeing the back. All right. Okay. And just a little bit of detail there on his hair. Looks like before we had done that—maybe not quite that much. Just kind of a little line there.

All right. Okay. Now, Derrick. I don't know, man. I don't really think we're going to see his nose. Derrick's nose is not that big. Just for the heck of it, let's wipe out that nose for a sec, see what we think.

Now, that looks weird. Okay. You know what? That might look all right if we just had a little bit of that eyebrow there. We got it on the king. How about him? He's too far around.

This, though—this I'm not digging. He's enough around that we should be able to see part of the shoulder. So—and then that also, if we look at—now, it's kind of hidden on there. If we look on here, he's got that kind of goes out and in and out.

All right, so we got a little cleanup to do on him. I say we do boom, boom, and boom, like so. In which case, that arm actually needs to come down a little bit, or I need to come up a little bit.

Let's see. Oh, we also didn't capture his whole shtick with that banded collar. All right, how about this? And then if we lose this—and we lose this. Better.

Let's see. All right, now we've got that kind of collar that comes around, with some of this action. Let's see. I almost think we'd be able to see a little bit of that come out like that. Oh, wow.

And then, I think that's a little far forward toward the shoulder. Shouldn't it be down just here?

All right. Better? Shouldn't that be even farther back? So indecisive, huh? That's the nice thing about an undo button. You know, just change your mind.

Yeah, and then maybe we kind of bring that back. Yeah. Well, would that be more like that? It's kind of all the way down here.

Finding the Accidental Four-Way Symmetry

Okay. And now the question is—go back to him real quick. Are we looking at more like that kind of a situation? I know I said no, but with perspective, our head does come out a bit. So maybe we do want that line. Let's see.

Okay. Oh, the paint symmetry. So the paint symmetry will default like that. I was like, “What is this? I got a mirror image of that.” I totally missed that. Too funny.

All right. Well, we'll get rid of that. That's totally adjustable. I just missed it. So we had, instead of a two-way, a four-way paint symmetry going on there.

All right, that's better.

Wrapping Up

Okay. I think this is one of those where we're going to leave it for now, and then we will come back. So, all right, let's save this bad boy, and we'll take on it some more. This is why it takes me so long to get a book out.

Okay. Well, anyway, thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed this. I hope you got to draw along with me a little bit, or at least just got to watch me draw a little bit.

So anyway, if you dug this, please subscribe, like, all that kind of good stuff. We'll keep cranking along on this.

You can find out more about my art and books at bdcrowell.com.

And until next time, I hope you keep drawing, bring some beauty into the world. Bye.