The adventures of Forced Companion Daycare - Art!

If you are using photoshop or something like it, start by drawing at a much higher resoution. Downsizing your image will make your lines cleaner any artifacts will be much smaller as well.

Draw your lines on a transparent layer not the background with white or whatever color.

Make a new layer and trace over your sketch, try not to use short pecky strokes on your final layer but longer smoother ones.

If you are using a scanner then you should adjust the levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels) . You'll see a 2d graph where the spike is probably high on the right side and mostly low every where else. Move the middle carat to the right (that's the one for midtones) that will make the lines darker.

Make a new layer for coloring, you can put the layer under your line layer or if you prefer, put it over your line layer and set it to multiply. That will allow you to color over the lines slightly without messing them up.

I always set the opacity on my brush to 100% for final lines because I don't like having to press too hard to get the line dark, I use my tablets pressure sensitivity to control line width not opacity. Anything less and the lines are kind of weird (like the lines on my first two pics because I did not check my brush settings )


I'm not much of an artist but those are the tips that i've managed to beat into my head over the years. And if you're using MS Paint or something like that, you're pretty awesome because that program is awful If you're using a mouse to draw I bow to you.

I have a little Bamboo tablet and Corel Painter Essentials for input. I switch to Paint .NET, which has a decent subset of Photoshop's functionality, to start coloring.

I find layers mysterious and therefore frightening but should probably work out how to build them into the sketching process, especially for the lil' wispy lines to black outlines transition.

If chibi BioWare characters are what finally force me to learn my way around drawing and digital artistry, I will feel...well...I won't know what to feel.

Wow, this has proved tremendously useful! Keeping the sketch level on a separate, removable layer makes things much prettier. And the safety net of duplicating the inked layer for coloring? Me gusta. Doesn't improve my steadiness of hand during the inking stage any, but it's a start.

So thank you!