Most US comic book pages are drawn oversized on large sheets of paper, usually Bristol board.
[3] Arthur Adams begins drawing thumbnail layouts from the script he is given, either at home or in a public place.
[4][5] Because a significant portion of his income is derived from selling his original artwork, he is reluctant to learn how to produce his work digitally.
He uses this lead because it strikes a balance between too hard, and therefore not dark enough on the page, and too soft, and therefore prone to smearing and crumbling.
He maintains sharpness of the lead with a Berol Turquoise sharpener, changing them every four to six months, which he finds is the duration of their grinding ability.
By 2000, he switched to Crescent board for all his work, because it does not warp when wet, produces sharper illustrations, and are more suitable for framing because they lack the non-photo blue lines.
[12] He also prefers to use reference only when rendering objects that require a degree of real-life accuracy, such as guns, vehicles, or characters of licensed properties that must resemble actors with whom they are closely identified, as when he illustrated the cover to Star Trek: The Next Generation: Embrace the Wolf in 2000.
[13] The penciling process that artist Adam Hughes employs for his cover work is the same he uses when doing sketches for fans at conventions, with the main difference being that he does cover work in his sketchbook, before transferring the drawing to virgin art board with a lightbox,[14] whereas he does convention drawings on 11 x 14 Strathmore bristol, as he prefers penciling on the rougher, vellum surface rather than smooth paper, preferring smoother paper only for brush inking.
[15] He does preliminary undersketches with a lead holder,[16] because he feels regular pencils get worn down to the nub too quickly.
[15] Artist and former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada begins with sketches much smaller than the actual size at which he will render the final drawing.
After picking the initial shapes, he will further emphasize his selections with colored pens, continuing to attempt different variations.
He will then, depending on how late in the day it is, either redraw the illustration on a sheet of layout paper or use his lightbox to tighten and clean up the drawing, emphasizing that the lightbox should not be a mere exercise in tracing, but an opportunity to refine or change elements in the drawing to make it "clean" enough to be inked.
[20] When Hitch transfers the drawing to the final art board, he does initial layouts with a 2H pencil, which he feels provides the necessary accuracy and detail, and uses an erasable blue pencil to mark panel frames and vanishing points, which he introduces after the rough stage.
The "best tool of all", according to him, is a traditional pencil cut with a craft knife, which he says can produce a variety of marks, and be used for detail, shading and general sketching.
He uses an Apple iMac desktop computer, flatbed scanner and Photoshop to modify his artwork digitally.
She also finds the Strathmore 300 series "pretty good" likes its nice texture and greater affordability, but says that must occasionally content with getting a "bleedy batch".
Though he says about 90% of his artwork are done without photo reference, he will sometimes photograph his friends pose as the central characters, or use a full length mirror to draw himself.
[27] Artist Jason Shiga penciled his 2011 graphic novel Empire State: A Love Story (Or Not) with a yellow No.
After importing the models into Studio or Max, he arranges the angles and other aspects of the scene before rendering them, such as placement of background objects or modifying gestures, while the computer corrects elements such as perspective, foreshortening, proportions, etc.
Although he sketches his layouts in pencil, the remainder of his work is done digitally, explaining in his 2006 book Making Comics that he had not used traditional materials like Bristol board, pens or brushes in years.
After sketching layouts, which he says are "pretty tight", and include the full script, he scans them into an 18-inch tablet/monitor to use them as a guide for lettering them in Adobe Illustrator.
After scanning the thumbnails, she enlarges them and uses them as rudimentary pencils, and "inks" over them in Manga Studio, and later colors the art in Photoshop.
[40] Sometimes a writer or another artist (such as an art director) will include basic layouts, called "breakdowns," to assist the penciller in scene composition.
[42][43] According to former Marvel editor Gregory Wright, John Buscema was a noted penciler whose breakdowns included all the structural essentials that enabled inkers to complete the art.
Other pencillers prefer to create detailed pages, where every nuance that they expect to see in the inked art is indicated.