I produce my work in three stages. I use Corel Painter 11 for sketching and Adobe Illustrator CS4 for designing.

1) The Sketch

Firstly I sketch my ideas. This allows me to rough out the design and also see how I can expand on my initial ideas. The sketch acts as the foundation for the design I hope to produce. I try to make sure the sketch covers as many elements of the design as possible before moving on to the next stage of the design, smaller details can be added later.

2) The Line-work

I place the sketch in a new Illustrator canvas, reducing the opacity of the image if necessary, and then lock the layer so that I can go over the sketch digitally in a new layer with the pencil tool. I draw everything by hand with the use of a Wacom Cintiq 12WX graphics tablet and name all of my layers for future reference. Once I have gone over the whole sketch, I then hide the locked layer and am left with clear paths to work with. I then group these paths based on what element each set of paths belong to. For example, if there are two characters, I would group the paths belonging to each character separately. This makes it easier to modify, arrange and colour individual elements in the design.

3) Colouring

Once I have finished grouping the paths and arranging all of the elements in the design, I then lock, duplicate (I keep a copy of the line-work layer incase I should need to make alterations at a later date) and hide this layer. I then go through each group and fill the paths with their respective colours, usually working within a five colour limit. When producing the line-work I am only concentrating on drawing and not the relevant position of the line in the design; this can lead to some objects which should be in the front, being at the back and vice versa due to the order in which I drew the paths and / or created the groups. Once everything from each group has been coloured accordingly, I arrange everything so that what should be in the front, is in the front and so on.

Make sure to check out all of Greg’s work at: http://cargocollective.com/gregabbott

Also if you enjoyed this also check out Nils Vogeding’s design article.

An illustration for shirts always starts with an idea and some sketches. When I get an idea, I just grab a random pen, some paper and start drawing. At this point it’s not important how everything looks. It’s all about capturing an idea.

So this time I’ll draw a vampire-kangaroo carrying some siamese-twin-skeletons. After the first sketches I do some research on the things that I want to draw. Research is very important because the better you understand something, the better you are at drawing it. Animals always have certain characteristics and they should show up in your drawing. I compare my sketches to photos on flickr or google and spot the differences. By doing so I found out that kangaroos have claws on their hands and their ears are bigger than I thought. Now it’s time for another round of sketches. More accurate ones. I tend to do a lot of sketches but it always depends on your deadline and how much time you are given.

When I’m happy with the characters and the composition it’s time for the final sketch. I collect all previous sketches and put them on my desk next to a fresh sheet of my special drawing paper. I prefer thick paper with a smooth surface. As for pens, I’m using a neon-yellow marker to sketch the basic outlines. Using a pen like this makes cleaning up the scanned linework a lot easier. The scanner barely even notices the yellow. I tried to make it more visible for this tutorial, here’s how the final sketch looks like:

Alright, now let’s ink this. I pfefer inking traditionally and I’m using Faber Castell artist pens for doing so. The first satge of inking is drawing the basic outlines. After I’m done with that the drawing looks like this:

Some parts are a little bit odd but they can be corrected during the next step, which is adding lineweight. This gives the illustration more depth and dynamic. There are some things you have to know. Basicaly thick outlines indicate that the object is closer to you. Thin outlines are used on objects that are further away from the viewer. Try thinking about seperating your drawing into different layers to find out how thick or thin the lines should be. This is how the drawing looks like inside of my head during that process. You might as well draw something like this on your sketches if it helps you.

This should give you a basic idea about the next lines. The balloon needs some thinner lines though because it’s made of a thin material. So with all that in mind I’m ready for varying the lineweight.

On to the next step: details. I really like this part. First I take another look at my reference pictures in order to get the details right. Sometimes I add a lot of details but sometimes I like to keep it simple. This time I decided to stop adding details at this point:

This is the point were the drawing gets scanned and the rest of my work is done digitally. A lot of people ask me how to achieve those solid black lines. Here’s how I do it. I scan the image, clean it up a little bit by adjusting the curves and going over it with the burn and the dodge tools. I redraw some parts if necessary. Then the image gets vectorized to clean it up a little bit more and to import it from Photoshop to Illustrator. For vectorizing I’m using a program called CR8Tracer. Google it up, it might be helpful for you. I think it’s a little bit better than Illustrator’s own tracing filters. But I don’t trust this program either, I still take a look at the paths and correct some odd parts with the pen tool.

Most of the differences are rather subtle. But now the linework all cleaned up and ready to be colored. Sometimes I do everything in Illutsrator and sometimes I take the linework and paste it into Photoshop. Both programs have their benefits. Chosing the program is based on experience and knowing what you are about to do. The more effects I want the more I’m leaning towards Photoshop. Simple stuff gets done in Illustrator.

A few sentences about using a tablet. I used to do all my stuff without it so I know it can be done. I recently bought a bamboo pen & touch knowing that it’s not the best tablet out there. But in my case it gets the job done. I’m still trying to get better at using it but I just don’t see myself going all digital anytime soon. I’ll stick to pen and paper for now. Another thing is that a tablet does NOT enhance your skills, it just enhances your possibilities.

I start coloring by chosing a shirt color and base colors for all the characters. I might change them afterwards but at this point, the illustration looks like this:

A little flat, huh? Yeah, that’s why I’m adding shading and highlights now. It adds more depth and realism. Chose a single light source and go from there. The light source I’m using here is in the upper left corner. That’s a good place for a light source. If you look at old paintings, you’ll notice that most of them use a light source like that. It has something to do with the way the majority of people see things. I’m not making that up, this is science, look it up if you’re interested. Anyways, the result looks like this:

You’ll notice I also added some extra details along the way. And I found better colors. Everything is pretty much done now. But I think in this case I really need a background. I like having spirals in the background and that’s the first thing I tried out this time but I did some more experiments and came up with something different.

I know it kinda looks like bacon. But I guess that’s okay. After all these steps the design is finished and I’m happy with the result. now I can mock it on a shirt and post it on a website or send it to the client.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something. If there are any quesions left unanswered, just ask.

To get a hold of Nils check out his website at: http://flavors.me/nvasion