Transcripts
1. Introduction: My name is Yuko Shimizu. I am an Illustrator and I also been teaching Illustration at School of Visual Arts here in New York for more than ten years. So, I'm an educator as well. As illustrator, my medium is ink and brush. I wanted to teach an inking class because almost every day and more than one person asked me, what ink do you use? What brush to use? How do you ink it? So, I'm not going to reveal my age but I've been inking for a very, very long time. So I think I have made a lot of mistakes. I learned a lot. I do a lot of experiment and I have a lot of resources to offer. So hopefully, you have fun learning in my course and come up with something cool and learn something new.
2. Brushes and Nibs: Okay. So, let's talk about brushes first, and I'll talk about Western brushes, usually watercolor brushes and also Asian brushes, those are calligraphy brushes. So, we're in the watercolor brushes section and there are many brushes, but make sure to pick the watercolor brushes. It usually says right here. Well it says a lot of paint too, but usually, oil paint brushes are thicker, and I think these are some of those longer and thicker, and these are not the best for inking. So, make sure to pick one that says watercolor, and those are soft, and draws well with soft medium ink. So, there are always different sizes, and the number goes smaller, and it goes smaller, and number goes bigger, and it goes bigger, and some are round, some are flat. So, for watercolor brushes, I personally recommend watercolor brushes if you are not used to inking with splash. Asian brushes, I'll talk about a little bit later on, but it really hard to get used to in the beginning. So, if you want to try out Asian brushes, great. But if you're not experienced enough, please start from watercolor brushes. Trust me. It makes your life so much easier. What you need to do is pick up different lengths and thickness of brushes. These flat ones are great when you want to do big portion or block. Obviously, this, a little bit bigger spaces, bigger lines. As it goes thinner and you can get thinner lines. So, I will say, pick up I think the different ones, these tiny ones, this one, maybe this one, maybe one more, and then, we are ready to go. If you are on your budget and you don't know what to pick up, these are some good ones. A lot of art stores carry these prepacked ones, and this one is $12.99, and you have a really thick one and really thin one. I believe these are synthetic, so it's easy to maintain. It's a really good beginners option. Let's talk a little bit about Asian brushes. I personally use Japanese calligraphy brushes, so Asian brushes are usually all real hair. It is very, very soft. There's pros, and cons, and everything, and I'll explain that later in my studio. But watercolor brushes are a lot easier to handle especially for beginners and you want real challenge, then you can use Asian brushes, but I don't highly recommend it for beginners. Beginners, let's stick with watercolor brushes and you're a lot more experienced and adventurous, Asian brushes are good options. As you can see, Asian brushes, there are a lot less selections if you're not in Japan or China or Korea. But nowadays, there are a lot of art supply stores here, in Da Vinci, they carry pretty good selection of Asian brushes. So, the price point is unfortunately high because a lot of them are handmade, and they are all real hair. One thing you need to know is with Asian brushes, you can't go cheap unfortunately. It's a fact. I used to use cheaper brushes. I'm not going to say what brands of brush were. You can tell and it goes. I'm not going to talk about what's the brush I used. But when you get inexpensive brushes, what happens is once you start inking, the tips splits, but the tip has to be super pointy to be able to grow, so it splits into two or three. You can't really draw the lines and that's unfortunately what happens with cheaper brushes. So, $21, $32, it's a lot, but you just have to go with it if you really want to use good Asian brushes. I usually go with something this thin old, a little bit thinner, and the biggest difference between Asian brushes and Western brushes is Asian brushes tend to have really long pointy brush, and so, what you can do is with adjustment of how you hold it, you can draw with almost one hair up to really thick lines with one brush. So, I will show the brush I use, which unfortunately, it's really hard to get in the US. I imported directly from Japan. But you can actually draw with one brush, thinnest line to thickest line. So, I actually only use one brush. When I showed you the watercolor brushes, I told you to pick up more than a few because watercolor brushes, it's shorter, and the range of thickness and thinness, you can make with one brush is very limited. So, you always need to have multiple thickness brushes to get all the thick and thin lines. When you're buying brushes, watercolor or the Asian brushes is the same, but especially for Asian brushes, please, please, please buy ones with the plastic cap on it because I will talk about how to maintain your brushes. But this is very important to keep the point of brushes always pointy and nice. So, let's talk about nibs next. So, this course is mostly about drawing with ink and brush. So nib, I'll just quickly go over. I do use nibs. I started inking with nibs. Now, I use brushes more because brushes have more versatile minds and expression you can have, but I do still use nibs because when it gets a tiny little details, it's hard to get with brushes, so I mix some nibs when the details get really small and the tip with it, which I will talk about later again, is that you pick nibs that is soft enough that the lines won't fight with the ink line you made with the brush. But I'll quickly go over nibs because nibs are fun. Those ones with, there's a cover on top, those are calligraphy nibs. So, they only make one thickness line. So, these are mostly for calligraphy or writing. The nibs you want to pick up are the ones that doesn't have those tops like these. Nowadays, a lot of people do manga inking. So, a lot of the art supply store outside of Japan sell all these Japanese nibs, which are fun to use. I can't define Japanese nibs a little bit on the harder side, so I personally do prefer Western nibs that are a little bit softer. As you can tell, nibs are not that expensive, and you buy a holder, and you put a nib in, and then you can start drawing. So, because these are not that expensive, you can try out different ones. Let's see which one look nice, just buy them, try them, and see which one you like. Initially, it's hard to see the differences, but once you get into it, it's really easy to figure out what works for you and what doesn't. So, these are the fun things to add to your ink drawing.
3. Ink and Paper: So let's talk about ink now. As you can see, there are a lot of inks to choose from, and it's kind of confusing in the beginning. For inking, the best ones are what's called Waterproof India Ink. There are two types of black inks. This one's water-soluble and this one's water-resistant. So usually, it comes either. Usually when it says India ink or Indian ink, it's waterproof. But Winsor & Newton has the water soluble ones as well. I personally use water-resistant ink because I drink a lot of tea while I draw and sometimes, whoops this happens but nothing happens on the drawing. I have to be honest that happens. It's life and so just to be safe, I use water-resistant ink. This is actually the ink I use, my favorite. There are lot of inks so you can try out different ones according to your taste. Some of them are expensive but like nothing go over $10. So, maybe you want to pick up a few and try. It's a good way to go. This is my choice. I've used it for years. I tried out different ones, and this has the best consistency. It's not too dark. It's not too light. It's not too gooey. It's not too liquidy. This one Dr. Ph. Martin's Black Star Matte, this one is my choice. Let me show you quickly the Japanese inks. It's called Bokuju in Japanese. A lot of the manga artist use this traditional Japanese ink. They're relatively inexpensive. It's like thick and dark and nice. The only reason why I don't use it is Japanese Sumi Ink is usually water-soluble and again, I drink a lot of tea so it's a little bit dangerous. So I don't use it, but it's a nice option, nice lines, nice thick black color and relatively inexpensive. So one's water-resistant and one's not, but it doesn't mean you can't mix them with water. Like this one, you can't mix them with water. If you want to do ink wash, you can use either one of them. It's fine. Water-resistant's just means, say if you finish drawing and it's dry and you accidentally drop water on top of it, it won't run. This will run. So, sometimes people intentionally use this to add water on top of the finish line, and let it run and come up with nice texture. So, it's just a matter of preference. We came to the paper pad section because we're always thinking about the least budget option. You can go up from here but easiest to pick up are the pads. What I suggest you do use in the beginning is bristol pads. Bristol pads usually come with two different finishes. One is called Vellum. That has little bit of texture and one is called smooth. It's like super smooth. So, what you might want to do is go to art supplies stores and touch them and see how you feel. You touch them, you feel it right away. I'm not looking at the pad. I know which one's smooth and I know which one's vellum just by touching. So, for my personal taste, smooth is a little bit too slick. The brush slips for me, but then some people don't like the feeling of brush gets stuck in the vellum surface, so they prefer smooth. Watercolor paper. It's a lot more rough and the lines might not come out as perfect. But what's good is it because it's made for watercolors, it absorbs the water quickly. So, there's a lot less mistakes of like, "Oops, I run my hand over the line I just drew." That doesn't happen often with watercolor because it absorbs the water pretty quickly and well. I personally like the imperfect line so I use watercolor paper. I can show you the exact paper I use in my studio. I don't actually use the pad, but these pads are like really good options. Just because we're at the art supply store, I didn't know but nowadays, they make paper for comic books. So, they even have lines. If you're comic artists, it's like a good surface to use. It already has borders. I've never seen this before. I've seen these in Japan but I didn't know they sell it here too. So this is a nice option it you're a cartoonist and you don't want to spend time measuring the size of the frames. It's already there for you. So there are all these options and what I want to add is I want you to always draw on the right side of the paper. Right side of the paper is the top side. In the beginning, you don't know. But once you really see the back and front, you start learning which side is front, which side is back. What's good about the pad is front is always on the top. So, you won't make mistakes even if you don't know how to read the front and back of the paper. Some papers back and front are the same. Some papers is different. For example, this Bristol pad. I can see back and front are definitely different and it's better to draw on the front. However, it is not that you can't draw on the back. It's just the ink stays better on the front but as long as you pick thick enough paper and dense enough paper, you can also draw in the back. Also one more thing to add. Please pick the paper that's thicker than certain thickness because it's water medium. If we use super thin paper, it just run through to the back. It's not pretty yield lines. It's not come out well and the paper becomes wobbly so that's nothing to happen with papers this thickness. Let's see. This is 100 pounds, 260 grams. That's a really nice starting thickness of the paper. So, let's quickly pick up a pencil before we go back to the studio and start drawing. Always HB and I'll explain more when we're doing the drawing. The HB is great because it's not too dark, it's not too light. It erases well so when I do under drawing for inking, I always use HB. So I have tons of HB pencils in my studio. So, this is what I recommend you could get. So this is called brush cleaner and preserver. I'm shooting this now because they are out of it in the store, but I highly recommend you to buy it. What it is is a brush cleaner in this solid form, and I'll show you how I use it and this keeps your brush last much longer and I always have it. Never draw without it. So, I hope you buy one too.
4. Bonus Video: Da Vinci Artist Supply: Okay. So, we came to Da Vinci Artist Supply. This is Kevin, owner of the store. Hi. Hi. Actually, the reason why we picked this store is, of course, I buy all my supplies here. I actually know Kevin since 1999, when I first started art school and I didn't know anything about art supplies and I have to get all my supplies ready for my first class. I almost wanted to cry because I just moved from Japan. He was the manager of an art supply store back then, right next to my school, school of visual arts. He helped me pick everything and for one few years. Every time I have issues with supplies, not to know what to buy, he helped me. It's like an art supply psychologist. Yes. Now, you have your own store. That's right. When did you open this store? Ten years ago. Ten years ago. How many stores do you have. Three now. Three now? Bet, you didn't know that. I thought they were two. I opened another one in January. Where are them all? This one is on West 21st Street in Chelsea. The other one is on East 23rd Street in Gramercy, and then this one on the Upper East Side in East 70th Street. If you want to come to this store and you're in the city. Great. But, if you are not in New York or close by and you want to buy from this store, you can visit. Again, the website is? Davinciartistsupply.com. Well, thank you for let us use your store. It's my pleasure. My pleasure.
5. Setting Up Your Materials: Hey. So, I hope you enjoyed going to the art supply store and get all your supplies. So, before we start actually going into the drawing, let's set everything up and then I will show you what I normally have on the table. First of all, scrap sheet of paper, actually, usually it's this sketch I already used, I don't need anymore, I use the backside because inking can be a messy business and you don't want to always be cleaning the mess in your table. So, I have this and a big jar of water and it's in this, I think it was a honey jar, it doesn't matter what it is. Fill it with water and we should have it. Don't forget paper towel, you just need one, nice soft one, get that ready and brush cleaner, have it open, so let's open the jar. Ink, when you open it put that away and this on here. So, you don't think it's important but it's kind of important, any piece of paper, the best one is the paper you're actually using to draw and I'll show you why you need it and how I use it. It doesn't have to be this big, you can cut it to any size and then have it here. So, I picked up these brushes, watercolor brushes, da Vinci. So, brushes, and I also want to show you some calligraphy brushes. So, this is the actual one I use, it's pretty neat, it's very thin. I bought these two pads, one is Bristol pad and one is a watercolor pad. So, I'm going to mainly using these two to show some drawing lines and textures. But because I get asked often what paper I use, so I took out the actual paper I use. It's big but this is the paper. It's Saunders Waterford and it is a watercolor paper and it's cold press,. That means there are more bumps and textures on the paper. As you can see, it's big paper and I usually cut it to the size I want to draw and use this. So, it's just to show because people do ask me what kind of paper I use, so it's just for that. I don't need it now but I'll have it here anyway. Brush pen, I don't use it now but I'll have it here anyway. We talked about new pen a little bit, I'll just quickly show it so I'll have it. So, I think we're ready to go.
6. Asian Brushes vs. Watercolor Brushes: So, first things first, it's the basics. If you have ink already, you know it. I'm sure there are some people who've never inked before. So, when you're inking, first, the brush is dry, then ink might be too thick. So, what I always do is wash the brush in water and then make the point with soft paper towel, and then dip it into ink. I hope you can see. It's not too little, it's not too much, just right. What you need to do is, when you dip it in, take off the excess ink, and then here comes why I ask you to have this paper because sometimes, there is too much ink and you make the point and take the excess ink off, then you start drawing, and that's how you start. This side is watercolor paper and this side is Bristol. I have two papers on the table. So, watercolor paper, again, has more texture, absorbs the water better, and the Bristol is more smooth. So, if you want cleaner lines, Bristol is better. Not sure, this watercolor paper doesn't have a lot of texture, so I don't know if we can see the line differences. But anyway, I will show that to you too. So first, let me show the difference between the watercolor brushes and the Asian brushes. So, I'll just draw a line. So again, take the excess ink out and make the point pointy, and I'll just draw simple lines. Start from the thinnest, thinnest, thinnest, and then go thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker. So anyway, that's like, see, it's very thin and you can get it to very thick with this one brush, and that's the biggest pro of the Asian brushes, calligraphy brushes. The con is because it's so soft, can you feel it? It's so soft, real hair are very soft and the tip is so thin and this is so thick. So actually, you can get a lot of different line quality. But at the same time, it's very very hard to control. So, if you are just starting to ink, I will recommend you to start from watercolor brushes. So, I will show you, next, how watercolor brushes will make lines. So, it's like a similar one, I took the similar one out. So look, it's similar, but you already see the differences. There's not too much of thickness differences. So, let me try. Again, make the tip pointy. Don't put too much ink in there and then start from thinnest to triangle thickest. Oops, it ended already. Wait, let me do it one more time. Let me put little bit more ink. Okay, start from thin, thick, thick, thick. Okay, so it does get close as thick. But if you look at the points, it's not as thin. I don't know, it's little to be small, so it might be hard to see. So, in watercolor brushes, you might need two or three to get the line differences of one of this, while with Asian brushes, you might only need one. So, let me use this thin one. Oops, okay. It's a little bit messed up, but I think we can still do it. So, here, this gets thin line, but it doesn't get thick. So, the biggest pro of watercolor brushes is, it's easier to use. If you're not used to inking with brushes and maybe you're not confident with control, this is shorter. So, there's a lot of control but, of course, you need more number of brushes to get different lines, so that's the difference.
7. Brushstroke and Nib Techniques: I always dip the ink into water first and because ink, well, this is a brand new ink. I just opened it now. It's in a pretty good density. It's probably on the little bit lighter side but this is a good brand, so it doesn't start to too light. Some of the inks starts to too light. Usually, what happens is when you're working on inking, your ink bottle is open for maybe 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes hours at a time. Sometimes, I draw eight hours a day. This thing is open almost eight hours a day and then it start drying up a little by little. When the ink is dried up, it's really hard to draw smooth lines. Everything start to look like this. To avoid that it's always good to dip the brush into water and take the water out. The brush is not wet but moist. It just adjusts the ink even if it's getting a little thicker and then make sure to make the point with edges. Sometimes, clean the edges this way and then start drawing like this. There are a lot of people. This is a brush pen I bought a few days ago. I actually don't use brush pens. A lot of professionals do use brush pens. It's a handy medium, you can carry around. There's a cap, you open the cap, you can use it. The reason why I don't recommend for actual drawing practices is you can't adjust anything. It's like ink is always the same amount. It comes out same amount and you can't really do much more than that and this, you can adjust. For example, I have a lot of ink on there and it's really thick line, right? Then, if you want to paint in, you put a lot of ink in and you can do this. If you don't put a lot of ink in, you can draw with just like one hair. This and this are drawn by exact same brush. Brush pens can't do that. Only when you have ink bottle and brush and you actually consciously adjust the amount of ink, then you can do this. Also, by say, take out most of the excess ink and then all of a sudden it's like a lot more dry. Oops, I can do a lot more and then you can do dry brush. It's completely different lines or textures, it's softer. If I'm drawing, I'll show you later a bit thick. If I'm drawing a wool sweater. I want some textures that ink is almost running out and that's when it makes interesting shapes and textures that feels like the surface of wool, for example. Or like hair, that feels like hair. I'm not drawing anything just the lines but it feels like hair. Maybe when it has a lot of ink on it, well, I'll quickly draw something. It's not anything. Let's pretend it's like a ring or bracelet and it feels like metal. With amount of ink you put in, you can adjust a lot of textures, and lines, and fittings, and materials, so that's why brushes are so cool. I bought this nib holder and this little nib at the art supply store. It's brand new, it might not take the ink as well because it's brand new. Anyway, I quickly explained that the art supply store why new pens can be useful with the brush inking. The line gets thicker, it's easier to draw with brushes because brushes are organic. More organic medium and nibs, as you can see, it's a tighter medium. When I need to get like tiny little details in the drawing that it's mostly damp brush or like I need to have like really clear edges to hand lettered font that goes into illustration then this becomes very handy. It's the same like this is where the ink goes in and when it opens, the ink goes out. Let's try and don't dip above here and then it's going to be a mess. Let's try and avoid the mistake. It's hard to see, well, let's see. I think this is right. You do the same thing you do with the brush. Just take the ink off and then you draw. As you can see, this nib is a soft nib. If you bought some nibs, you test it out and you realize some nibs are softer and some nibs are harder. Hard nibs mixed with brush is not the best marriage because they don't merge together well. The nib lines are so harsh, pointy, and crisp and then while the brush lines are soft and round, and they fight against each other. I find some nibs that are very soft and then so I will draw right next to one of the brush lines. Sorry, yeah, ink. The tricky thing is with the nib ink runs out pretty quick. Anyway, if I don't say, you can really tell this one is drawn by a different medium. I can get a lot more details with it because it's a pointy medium. See, you can't do that with brush, these points. That's why I always have nibs around and when I get to really, really tiny details that I have to get it right, I mix this. One thing you really need to know about nibs. Rinse it, wipe off the water quickly as soon as you finish. You don't want to clog this part, that's the crucial part in the nib. Also, if there is some water, it's metal, so it starts rusting and once it's rusted, it's done. These are cheap but you want your nibs. You paid for it, you want that to last for long time, especially, the ones that you feel is a right match for your drawing technique. Always wipe, clean it, and put it away back.
8. Review: I've been drawing mostly on this watercolor paper pad, and this is actually the piece of paper that I normally use to draw. I don't know if you will see the difference, you probably don't. This is the smoothest bristol and watercolor paper, it has more texture, and this is the watercolor paper I used that has a lot more texture. So, since its on video, I don't know how much you will see, but I will try and draw similar lines, and see if you see the line differences. I preferred this because I personally preferred the lines to be imperfect and thus the bumpier the paper gets, the more imperfect the line gets, and that's how I like it, and some people like it like super, super smooth. This paper is a little bit too slippery for my taste, but you get like really clean crisp lines. This is again watercolor paper I've been drawing on this for a while, so I don't know if you see it. It gets bumpy on the edge. It might be hard to see on the video. I am it making a mess. Then, I'll draw on this, and you know what happens is, this paper gets dry brush so fast. Let me draw again with a bit more water. So, anyway, you'll see it start to break so easily, so compare this to this. With one line, you don't see a lot of dry brush effect. This, you start to see more dry brush effect. With this line kind of immediately goes into the dry brush effect. I showed you what brand this is, but it doesn't matter like the more rough the water color gets, the more rough the line gets. So, in this class, I'm just trying to teach the basic techniques I know. I been inking for a long time, so I guess I have learned a lot of knowledge over the years, and at the end, you decide. I'm not trying to make you like me. I want you to do what you do best. I want you to do what you feel that's suitable for you, so some of you go for super clean lines. Go as smooth as paper as possible, and some of you like me like imperfect lines, then go for rougher paper. So, you can see the line differences these each different mediums can make. Let me show you some cleaning tips, and it's sounds dumb, but it's very important. Again, like you want your brushes, you want your favorite brushes, you want your favorite materials to last a long time. I draw with this one brush most of time, and I have a whole stack of it in my studio, but I actually only opened a new one like every month or every 2 months, and I sometimes draw eight to 10 hours a day for few days in a row, so you know how much I use. But the trick is, so water resistant ink. I told you water resistant ink is better because you will make a mess if you drop a drop of water onto your drawing, but everything has pros and cons. So con is, it can also dry and clog your materials easily. So, every time you dip your brush into ink, I always rinse in the water. But what else I do is, here comes the brush cleaner, and then I always put some brush cleaners on here and reinsert. When I'm putting away the brush, I do like a few times, so it's called brush cleaner. It cleans the clogging and brush away pretty well, and if you have this brush cleaner around and always. Everytime you dip your brush into the inkwell, use this, then you brush will last for a long time. So, it's a very important step, and I highly recommend it, so this is a good one to have. If you can't find brush cleaners, again, I don't know some of you are probably seeing this video from outside of US, and I don't know what kind of materials are there. But If it doesn't work, you could use soap. That will work, and make sure to rinse with soap while in them, then make the point. If you put it away, this plastic thingy that came with it, don't lose it. Make the point, and leave the ink here, and let it dry this way, and it will keep your brush clean and long lasting, so follow this. One more thing, don't ever do this and leave it in the water. It will turn your brush like this in a funny position, and you will lose the brush pretty quickly, so clean it. Make point even in here. Clean your materials well, and then they will be with your for long. So, you get the basic idea, and some of you I know you've already done in Q4 long time. It might be something that you just watch for review, but it's a nice thing to review once in a while. So, use different brushes you have and have fun trying on different papers, making different type of lines, adjust the amount of ink. So, I just want you to make quick drawings, make quick lines to just get used to different brushes, papers, and starting to figure out like whats wrong, you feel more comfortable moving forward. So, I want you to do that, and then in the next step I will show you more detailed drawing and texture making and all that.
9. Calligraphy with Ai Tatebayashi: Hi. So, in this next segment, I'm going to have my friend Ai Tatebayashi help me, she's an illustrator, and also she does calligraphy, Japanese calligraphy. Whenever my illustration needs Japanese or Chinese calligraphies in there, I call her and ask her to do it for me and I incorporate that into illustration. So, I specifically wanted her help in this segment. So, hi Ai. Thank you so much for coming. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for your help. So, what we're doing is if you're, say, Japanese or Chinese and have Chinese or Japanese calligraphy background, it's something you already know. But, I'm assuming most of you are Americans or Westerners, maybe? So, it might be something you've never learned before and it's a cool trick. You don't have to use it but I think it's a nice thing to know and even if you don't use it, it's a nice bar trick to impress your friends. So, it's a fun thing to know. So, what we're doing here, she is going to help me write a letter, "forever." You might have seen those on tattoos or one of your friends. It's the "forever" letter in Chinese and Japanese, and why I asked her to write this is because in this one Chinese character, "forever," there are eight different brush strokes in there. So, any Chinese letter there is, it consist of some of those eight strokes. Many of them are just a little bit of them but there are only eight strokes you need to know to basically write every character in Chinese and every single eight strokes is in this one letter. So, it's cool. So, if you could help us. Can you go ahead and write the letter for us, please? So, as she write, I'll count the eight. So, this is one, that's two and go straight into three, and then flip into four, five, six, seven and eight. So, there we have it. That's the character "forever" in Chinese. Thank you. I'll take that for you. So, you saw while she was writing that there were different speed, different grips, flips and how it disappears or stop. So, next one, I will explain a little bit while she's writing. So, if you could, start whenever. Yes. So, the first one is just called dark spot, and the second one is straight to the right short line and then pull it down straight line and then flip. Quick flip. That's one, two, three, four and then the fifth one is just short flip and the sixth one is sort of a elegant line and then those two masculine lines follow, and the last one is, this one is said to be almost like draw it, write it like if it's a female hair. It's soft and then these two are strong. I read about this and these are like opposite of almost the same lines but this is the elegant one and this one is the masculine one. According to what I read, you write it as if you're holding a sword and cutting into flesh. So, there are some history lesson right there. So, it seems like similar lines, consist of similar lines but you can tell some are more curved, some are more feminine, some are more masculine, some are quicker, slower. So, these are the eight strokes. Whenever I draw, I incorporate this rhythm into drawing different lines or expressing different textures. For example, this might be how I hold the brush when I'm drawing the hair, but this might be something more masculine. I don't know when someone is punching into something and when I draw the action of the arm, maybe that's the line I'm thinking of when I'm drawing. So, these lines are, it's a little bit hard to learn but it's a cool trick to know and once you keep in mind how you can incorporate them, you can make your drawings a lot more interesting. So, maybe you can draw one more?
10. Illustrating Textures, Part One: Wasn't it cool, my friend showed you these like, it's like a bar trick but it's a really good thing to know. Because in Japanese calligraphy or Chinese calligraphy, that's the basis. If you know those eight strokes and then intentionally, start using what you learned, it's not mandatory but I think it's really cool. Because then you can express a lot with like one brush or two brushes. So, you guys probably know Katsuhiro Otomo, who is a famous comic artists from Japan. He did Akira. So, everyone watched Akira. He uses pens not brushes. Famously, in the 80's or 90's, he said, "Brush drawings are too old-fashioned and it's not cool." I still remember like wow. It was shocking because I was always using brushes. But then, everything comes back and what I think is, yes, when the lines are pen and very limited one thickness line, it's cooler, it's lighter, it's more graphic. But then again, there's pros and cons in everything. With brushes, what you can do is with this one thing, you can make so many rich different lines which the pens cannot do and then express so much more. There is again from what you saw my friend I did, there is speed, there is weight, there's softness, power, everything can be expressed with this one thing. So, we have to take advantage of that. So, I think that's good to know those eight strokes. So, I will do some quick demos and to show what kind of different things we can draw. So, I did one earlier a little bit. So, imagine hair. Some soft hair of let's say a girl. So, draw the hair is flowing in the wind. Because it's light, it's hair. So, see that it feels like hair. You start to get dry brush because I haven't dipped the brush into water in a while. It's cool because it makes it even more hair-like. Let's make a face. So, eyelashes. Oh no, eyebrows sorry. It's even softer. Because it's a very thin hair. You can draw that. Let's go to eyes and eyes are not those soft things. You want to hold your breath and go with one stroke and then the bottom, another one stroke, and maybe she has double eyelid. Then lets give her eyelashes and then maybe it's better to go from in out, just like how the eyelashes actually grow. I'll turn the paper around so it's easier for me to draw in out. A little bit detail of three-dimensionality of the face. Speed up the line changes and also how I grip changes. It's softer in the hair and then even softer when I'm drawing thinner shorter hairs like eyelashes and eyebrows. It's more hold your breath and draw one line for eyes, face, shape, and neck, things like that. So then, let's move on and show some different lines. So, let's say she's wearing a shirt, a cotton shirt. So, cotton is a soft material but not so soft. It has a lot of edges. That's how I feel. So, it almost start to look like this is when I have a lot of fun. Because when I draw the lines for these cotton shirts, it's almost like when Ai was doing not me, my friend Ai. Sorry, it's a confusing name, isn't it? Doing calligraphy. So, it's start and stop and that makes these angular lines of the shirt. So, what I'm doing is actually when I'm drawing, I'm not good at calligraphy, but like I'm actually using the knowledge that we just show of calligraphy into the drawing. Also, what's cool is what you can do with brushes. It's line drawing. So, it's actually pretty flat. I mean obviously, but it doesn't mean we don't think about light source. So, the top of the hair might be like lighter because the light is hitting and then bottom here, it might get thicker because that's where the shadow is. Or let me quickly draw arm. The top part of the arm probably light is hitting. So, it's a little bit thinner and then the bottom part, it's a little bit thicker. So, it's still flat by doing this instead of both side is like this. See, it start to look a bit more flat but before it has more three-dimensionality. So, it's a lot of things to think about and in the beginning, when I first learned this from friends and the people who taught me how to ink, I was like man that's a lot of things to learn. But in the beginning, you have to really think and do it, but then once it becomes your nature, you do it naturally. I don't even think like right now I'm thinking because I have to explain to you guys, but usually, I can do this without even thinking because it became my second nature. So, it's not the best drawing I did, but I think you get the sense of there are different lines you can express with this one or two brushes you have by how to hold it, how to put weight, how to move quickly, slowly, softy, hard, sharp, round and you can express all these different lines. Again, this is an example I just showed you how I do it, but this is not the way everyone has to do it. This is just how I do it. Best thing for you guys to do is now you start drawing things maybe things that surround you. Maybe you would draw a brush. Brush has this part, where it's like wood or something, this part metal and this soft part. Maybe use it for something simple as that like how do you differentiate the lines by looking and feeling what they are made of and how they should feel. So, there is no right and wrong, but I think the best advice I can give you is pay attention to different textures. Different things have shirt, glasses, hair, hand, nails, everything. By paying attention, you get better and then you start doing your own way and start drawing anything you see there are different textures and think of how you can differentiate drawing them and by doing that, you get better and better and better.
11. Illustrating Textures, Part Two: So, that was a quick demo I did, but I wanted to show you different textures by. I just quickly picked up a few drawings that I did recently, formed a pile, and then I want to show you the different, marks and strokes I made. So, this one and I recently finished, it's supposed to be a news week cover. So, I'm not sure. But, water. So, a lot of powerful lines because, it's a big tsunami. So, I want it this wave to be powerful, I put a lot of ink into the brush, and kind of hold my breath and, went right into making curvy lines. A lot more, black and white strong differences, so, that's like the texture I made. This of a lot of different textures, so see the difference. This is a big tsunami, and this is kind of a calm water, so it's kind of similar, but the difference I made is, the line is a lot softer, there's not too much difference between black and white. So, everything feels a lot calmer. This is well it actually looked at this, but it's easier to see it like this. So, these are birds flying. I wanted to express the movement. As well like a feathers that are soft so, the lines of the feathers mostly I dipped, the Russia ink, to ink and quickly went through quick strokes, round strokes, and there was a lot of black. The feathers feels powerful as well as kind of soft. That's what I did. There is a bicycle so, metal. My trick for metal, it's like, there is a huge difference between the shiny part, and shadow part. So, how I normally draw, is kind of contrasts between black and white, and shows like the shininess of the metal. Of course, this also you have to kind of draw the line quickly, strongly because, metal is a hard material, not soft material. So, that's the difference between this feather, and this metal. Feather is soft and metal is hard. If you look at the lights, of the bicycle, it has a strong light and dark, and that kind of shows the reflection of light onto the shiny metal. Lambs. So, I just made soft circular lines for lambs, because it's about a pregnant woman sleeping, so I wanted this to be calm, happy feelings. Look at the hair, it's a little bit different hair than I drew last time because, last demo was more like you know blonde or light colored hair, and she has a dark colored hair. So, it's more chunky but it also has softness. There is a lot of chunk black thing. It kind of disappears with dry brush. That's intentionally done. Horns are, a bit more tightly drawn, and, it's thicker line was the fur. It's soft and round. Also, fabric it's similar to the cotton shirt. I was thinking about softer material than cotton. So, there is a lot less angular lines than the last one I drew to show the fabric is a lot softer. This is, so much about the metal again. So just reviewing the metal. I have a lot of fun drawing different chains, and it's about escape art is in the water. So you see, black and white strong contrast. This shirt is almost like the same shirt I drew. I need them all. So, he's wearing, probably a cotton wool denim shirt. That's how I was feeling. The hair is a little bit stronger in line, than the other two I showed, because he's a guy, and I'm imagining him to have a little bit thicker hair or maybe. So, it's fun differentiating the hair. Hair's not just one thing. I have kind of thick hair. But, some people have curly hair, some people have dark hair, some people have light hair, and it's really fun to differentiate that, without using any color, just by using brushes and inks. This was a lot of fun. So, geese, I cannot draw, well goose, sorry. I cannot draw a goose from memory, so, it's always important to get a good reference materials. I don't have to prove to anyone that I can draw goose, I can look at reference materials to make them look believable. So, it was fun drawing. See this part is more graphic big feathers, and graphic shapes, and then around here it's soft, almost like fur, like feather. So, each one's drawn with a dry brush. It's similar to these plants, it's soft and then the actual leaf part. I wanted this to be, almost straight but in organic so, I intentionally used the dry brushes. On the contrary, the eggs, because eggs are smooth and round. So, I dip the brush and do a lot of ink and sort of drew them very thin. I always loved to draw, knitted materials. It's a lot of making teeny little shapes. I would do that in probably the next demo. So, that's a fun, different way of drawing materials. The puffer jacket, is close to what I did with cotton shirt. It's little bit fuller because, you have to have the view or to imagine that there is floppy thing inside. So, that's a little bit of getting used to but it's fun making things like that.. Rubber boots. So, clean lines. Strong light and shadow like metal, because it's a shiny material. But it's also a different type of shiny material from metal. It's softer, durable. So, it's a lot of things to learn but like, bottom line is, if you keep practicing, with your notepad and brush pens, carry around, draw anything you see that look interesting eventually, it becomes natural, second nature to you. So, practice makes perfect. This was a funny one, it's about World War II. The fun part was the explosion. I did dip the brush into ink and then, took almost all the ink out onto this, paper towel. Then, intentionally made them into dry brush to draw these smokes and explosions. On the contrary, the fire is not something soft. It's almost bold. So, more clean edge lines. Again, cotton shirt and, some metal, some shiny materials. Airplanes were definitely fun. So, that's kind of it.
12. Sketching and Scanning: Okay. So, the next is going to be the fun part. I want you to start and finish your own inked piece, and it can be anything you like. If you're an all-shader, you can come out with a cool image that you always wanted to ink, or you can find any piece that you did in a sketchbook. If you're a cartoonist and if you want to ink the whole page, that's cool too. I have one restrictions because you watched the whole thing and you learned how to make different textures, and line quality, light source, differentiating the material and all that. So, I want you to add these six different marks, different strokes, different textures into your piece. What six? I don't care. But I don't want you to just make drawings with one-line quality, six different. So, while you are doing it, I'm going to do it too. Also, I want to show you some tricks I use in bringing my sketches into final. I'm going to start with actually coming up with some idea that I'm going to start and finish for this course. So, let me start thinking of something that has six different textures. So, something fun. I want to have at least, I don't know that, maybe a kid, kid and like a, I don't know. Knitted hat and then, I like puffer jacket. So, maybe he's wearing a puffer jacket, riding on a cat, something like that. How's that? How does that sound? Kind of fun, right? So, okay. So, I think I have an idea here. So, a kid, probably a boy, wearing a knitted hat and here is a little bit of hair, he has a goggle on, he has a puffer jacket, maybe jeans, maybe like sneakers, or boots. Don't ask me why big cat, the cats are cute. So, let me draw a big cat. He doesn't care this little kid is on there and he's sleeping, and he's holding a lollipop. So, okay. I have an idea here. So, let me show you how to transfer this into actual drawing. A lot of people who has an ink too much, they do what? They tried to do which I think is not the best move is, "Okay. I have the drawing, let me ink on this." Then, what's going to happen is, I worked so much on it, I erased all out, I draw pretty dark. Then, if I draw, if I try to ink directly on it, it's hard to see the lines I'm inking. There's too much drawing, it's probably really hard to erase. Besides, this is not the good paper to ink on. So, and then, I like this drawing and I don't want to ink it, and maybe I'll ruin it. I think the last part is, what a lot of people face when they just start inking, because when you just start inking and you don't know a lot about it, like you always worry about ruining it. So, what I do is, I'll show you but I scan the same, print out to the size I want to draw, trace a quick D to the paper I draw on. Then, I don't have to worry about it, I will never lose this. If I'm messed up on that, I can retrace it and start over again on a different paper. So, I have nothing to worry. When you're not worried, you can be more brave with lines and that's when the drawings come out better anyways. So, let's go to my computer and I'll scan in, and then, print out. Then, we can come back and do a drawing. While I'm doing that, you can start coming up with ideas, I will pick up some of the pieces you'd like from your sketchbook to ink and then, you follow the process I'll be doing. Then, let's start inking. I quickly the tape the paper onto the paper, turn the light box on. If you don't have the light box, you can always use the windows. So, don't worry about it. Then, I just quickly draw out the general shapes and compositions of the sketch I already drew. Here comes why HB pencils are important. HB pencils erase the easiest, from my experience. Because after that your ink is done, you're going to erase it and you don't want the lines to be there. If it's like B2B, the line won't erase well. If it's H, the thinner pencils, then you scratched so much into the paper. So, sometimes this, like there's a dent on the paper. So, HB, I feel is the best pencil. So, why I'm only doing it quickly is, this is me, some get used to. So, the final result is like this. I'll turn off the light box, so you can see. So, very light, but like everything I need is there. What's important with inking is, that you're not tracing. A lot of people make this mistake. When you trace, your line kind of dies. It doesn't feel alive. The lines feel dead, because you're just tracing. So, to avoid it, I intentionally trace the sketch as quickly as possible. So, it's always, when I'm inking, that's the first time I'm drawing and I'm excited. I'm thinking about the line, so the lines feel alive and not dead. So, let's bring this back to the table and let's start inking.
13. Inking Your Sketch: So, we're back to the drawing table, and this is what I traced with my HB pencil from my sketch that was blown up to the actual size I want to draw. So, see the difference? What I intentionally do is actually trace as roughly as possible. The tracing always helps because you've already established a composition size, shape, movement, and everything, so you don't need to redraw that. It saves a lot of time. But at the same time, don't go too tight with your sketches because once your inking is just tracing of your drawing, your mind starts to lose the energy and the spontaneous feeling, and you always want that in your final piece. So, intentionally keep it simple. You can always go back in whenever you're inking drawings started and then, oops, I need to actually draw the hand tightly, so I can confidently ink what I'm drawing, because hands are hard. Then if you want to actually draw that in and make it tight while you are drawing, you can do that, or like you want to establish the face tighter or anywhere else, you can do that. But start from something relatively simple and then let's draw on it and have spontaneous feeling going. So, let me start. I will draw quickly a few different spots how I'm going to draw. Then the rest, because I think it's going to take like maybe two hours to draw the whole thing, maybe more, maybe less, you don't want to watch me draw for two hours. So, I'll just start from some part and then you can look at it in real-time, and then the rest of it, we can fast forward and see the final result later. I'm making this up. In some parts, I just have to use reference materials. Sometimes you can make things up, somethings you can't, and it's good. The reference materials are your friend to make your piece look better. So, let me draw a little bit of hair. I like more dry brush. Also like when I'm drawing these knitted things, I'm also thinking about light source, where the shadow is, so the parts that lifted the most in the knit, it's probably lighter and then where these blades meet, that's where the shadow is. So, if you look at me starting to draw in and of course, I will go in and fix it a little bit more later, but some parts have more textures and some parts have less. Let me show some other texture before I go to the time-lapse, so puffer jacket is probably like light, nylon or shiny, slippery material. So, I want the line thin, and at the same time, I don't want line like these knitted lines, I want something more crisp. So, its something like this. It's almost like, I love making crease with drawing, because it feels like I'm doing Chinese calligraphy or something. So, that's the texture I'm making for the puffer jacket. Let me just quickly do parts of the jeans. I want the jeans to be black and this jeans is thicker material. So, it's thicker lines, its similar lines to this, but it's a little bit more bold. What I do what people think I'm crazy is, when you see white lines inside black in my drawing, I'm not actually using white, I'm actually drawing around white with black and that's why you see the white lines at the end. I taught many students in the past, some people have the same taste I have in drawing. They love it. This is like something you have to love it to do it. I don't recommend anyone to do this who don't enjoy it. This is something that is hard to explain, it's just like fun, getting into the zone, and just make these white lines by going around, and by the way, you can always turn your paper around, it's makes your life so much easier. The point of ink drawing is it's not going to be perfect. Sometimes you feel like you made a mistake, and if it's not a huge mistake, I just recommend you to keep going because, when it's the starting of a drawing and you make a mistake or something look imperfect, it bothers you. But when the drawing keeps going, it's a very small part of a big thing and it won't bother you so much anymore. Let me just draw part of the cat's face a little bit and then we're going to just move on. So, I draw a little bit of part of cat and what I did was like eyes, I just went with one stroke. I think there's a lot of buildup I need to do, but what I have done so far is pressed the brush to get nice shapes of the stripes without going over too much. So, I'm filling the shapes and I started filling some fur with slight strokes and then I have to keep building this up. So, the rest I want to show with time-lapse and let me show you some fun, unconventional way of doing things like, how to erase a small mistake I have made, and so I'm going to show you that.
14. Final Touches and Tips: If you made some mistakes, you want to erase it and how do I do it, and I'll show you some good techniques. A lot of people think, this is a white fixing materials, obviously you can tell I haven't used this in a while. I just pull it out from a drawer, just to show. This is a cool thing to have but obviously, you can tell I don't use it. So first thing you think is, see, it looked like I haven't used in while. Like oops, I made a mistake, you use white and fix it, right? That's what you think. It doesn't look great in your drawing because you have this white thing in a nice black and white drawing and white doesn't match your paper. I actually got yelled at when I was in art school when I was using these erasing materials, so throw this away. You can use it for other things. How I do it is this. There are two ways of doing it and I will show you. So, box knife or any kind of knife. So let's see, so here, I made a mistake. Let me clean this out and you can clean it out with this. Not with the pointy part but it's right around here and you kind of scratch it off nicely, and that's one of the reasons why your paper has to be certain thickness, because if you did it was thin paper, it's dead. Let's clean the eraser. It's gone. You can clean it better but like, hey. How cool is that? Your original drawing looks like you've never made a mistake and you will ink line is gone. So, that's one way of doing it but when you're using the knife, you can only fix like a very, very, very small part, so like that. I do it not often, but often enough when the line went up a little bit longer than I need but another way of fixing is sandpaper. Sandpaper, it's good. So, let me erase, let's see this one. You actually sand it and it will come out. It needs a little bit of patience. It's already coming out, right? You probably need a cleaner sandpaper than this, but hey, it works, so you have some clean part. Look, almost gone. If it bothers you a little bit because it looks like, it's like the paper is fluffier there. What you can do is, it's a kind of a coarse sandpaper but you can use fine sandpaper and kind of rub it around, and it will go nicer. Actually, a teacher told me what to do is, it's the same paper and then you press it and then you press it on top, and actually some of the fiber from this paper goes onto the paper and it looks better. So that's the erasing technique. Now this but is this. How cool, you learned a new thing today. So, erasing technique was kind of fun and I'm going to show you one more trick that I actually haven't used so often but I know it's cool. So, old toothbrush, obviously cleaned well. This works when say, I don't know the idea of drawing action scene and someone's getting shot, or someone's getting hit or something is like action is coming out. So like blood or something like that. It works and you put some ink onto. It's kind of messy so make sure to cover your table and excuse myself, I don't want my hands to be messy, so I use this rubber gloves, and I do this. Yeah, I always have rubber gloves. Especially like sometimes I sand and like sand, like oops I made it kind of a big mistake. If it's too big, I have to throw away but if it's okay enough, I tried to sand it and then I have all these ink into my fingers and it's kind of nasty so I use this. Okay, I haven't done this in a while. So, if I made a mess, I'm sorry. So, it's like, see? How cool is that? You can use this in a lot of different things, matched with line drawings, having this texture is cool. So, if you are interested, use it, it's a lot of fun.
15. More Creative Classes on Skillshare:
Yuko Shimizu, Illustrator, Instructor at School of Visual Arts
