An Ant-Learn to Read - The Art Process Part 2

It all starts with a company called Wacom.  I'm pretty sure they wrote the book on this and revolutionized the graphics industry ever since.  These tablets are used in illustration, photo-editing and countless other ways.  Chances are, if you think it might be able to do it, it already can.  These tablets are really, really, really great.  Why?  One word.  Well, two.  Production.  Fast production.  

Those of us who operate under strict deadlines every single day, know that time is short.  People want results and they want them fast.  Any edge we can get to combat this from day to day, helps.  These tablets help.  I  like help.  


Illustrators like myself in years past, and even today, grab a piece of paper and a pencil and start sketching.  They finish their sketch, maybe ink it, or color it, depending on the artist's style.  All with pencils, markers, fancy ink pens or whatever they want.  There's nothing wrong with doing it that way.  It's art.  You can create whatever you want, when you want, how ever you want.  

The next step would be to scan the work, make the appropriate crops, or other edits.  Then you can publish it online.  All this take time.  

Wacom Tablets work in nearly every application on your PC or Mac.  It's not a replacement for your mouse, but more like a supplement to it.  I have been known to use my tablet for surfing the web even.  My Tablet is actually tired and in need of replacement, as it is about 4-5 years old.  


In the children's book, An Ant - Learn to Read, all the inking and coloring was done digitally, using Adobe Illustrator CS4, with a Wacom Tablet and pen.  What people might not know also, is that all the drawings I did were also exchanged through email.  There was no paper involved at all.  My publisher would send me 4 drawings attached in an email at at a time, and I would ink them and send them back to her the same way.  I should mention that no scanners were harmed in the making of this blog post.

In the next post, I'll unveil a brand new video that I put together.  And I'll go into my review of using Adobe Illustrator - the good and the bad.  Stay tuned for Part 3.    

An Ant-Learn to Read - The Art Process Part 1

The children's book I helped ink is now available for purchase on Amazon.  It's called An Ant - Learn to Read (Book 1 of 3).  That can be found here.  It was very neat to see the culmination of everything come together for the first time.  In a book.  Published on Amazon.  Holding it my hands for the first time was a bit of a surreal moment.  I haven't had a large number of things published and on the market, so seeing this was a big deal.  Like, huge.    

I have gotten asked a lot about this, so I thought I'd try and make things easier for people to understand.  Keep in mind, this is just the art process.  The writing portion/publishing is a completely different animal.  Let's go behind the scenes on the art.  

As you can see in the layout below, there's 3 images.  The sketches (top) in blue pencil;  The inks, (middle);  And then the color (bottom).

Example Illustration 1

I'm basically bringing the sketch artist's vision into black and white, and giving the colorist a map to follow.

Example Illustration 2

Now, you're automatically thinking, oh ok, he just grabbed an ink pen and went over it.  Nope.  The inking and colors were both done, never having touched a real pen or marker.  How?  This is where the plot thickens...

I'll show you for the first time how this is done;  Where it's taken me as artist;  What processes I'm currently using;  And what the future holds for me and Illustration.  I'll give you a hint...it doesn't involve real pens and pencils.  But it does involve iPads and iPhones and two Adobe products.  Stay tuned for Part II.