What I Use To Draw (Tracing/Ruling/Lettering)

Because of my interest in traditional animation when I was a teenager, I got used to using a lightbox in my art. I attended after-school classes at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) for young artists interested in animation, where they provided animation art stands, cameras and paper for the students. I also worked at home, borrowing a lightbox my friend Rob Beck's father had made him. I bought a plastic peg set to hold the animation paper while animating my crude but enthusiastic projects (none of which I still have). I won second prize in a competition for an overly-ambitious fantasy cartoon, but was kicked out of the program the following session because of my lapses in bad behavior (one of these days I plan to post about my college animation projects at NYU. I was not thrown out of NYU, btw).

My animation projects got me used to using a lightbox to tighten up rough drawings. Years later I borrowed a very large and clunky lightbox from my Pirate Corp$! publisher and friend Brian David Marshall to use to work on my comics. Eventually it became mine and I used it for many years afterward. It was never a perfect implement because it was really made for photography use -- it was big, boxy and uncomfortable to draw on. But it lit up and it was free, so I didn't complain.

Some years ago I finally replaced it with an Artograph lightpad (see photos 1-3), a flat, lighter version of a lightbox. It's been a great upgrade. It's still thick enough so you can set a T-square against it to rule straight lines, etc (photo 4) but thin enough to be able to lean against and work easily. I'm hoping to be able to buy a larger one sometime to have a little more room for larger drawings and comic pages. The lightpad is sturdy enough to be used as a lapboard and once in a while I'll prop it up and plug it in so I can work with a crappy movie or an RPG live play session at my writing/office desk.

In photo 1 you can see my burgeoning third attempt at a cover recreation commission. The first attempt was almost finished when I screwed it up. The second attempt was done on heavier paper that turned out to be horrible for inking. If I don't get this latest version finished soon I will leap out of my third-floor window. I'm using the lightpad to trace elements I like from the original Deadline cover and linework I liked from the earlier attempts. It's been a weird drawing to do because my art style has changed so much since I drew the original and my brain gets stuck in trying to recreate the old style. Probably over-worrying that, and I think that's led to some of the problems I've been having with it. The customer has been waiting five years, iirc, so you can see why the commission list hasn't been open in almost that long.

Anyway, as mentioned before, a T-Square (photo 4) is a pretty essential tool for ruling straight lines and comic panel borders and all the stuff you use a T-Square for. A

I have three metallic rulers, ranging in size from 18" to 6" (see photo 5). I like wooden rulers but they can chip and become unreliable for measuring.

Also in photo 5: art tape to hold drawings down to the drawing board, lightpad or lap board, and a glue stick, for pastedown corrections. I also use the glue stick when I print out oversized roughs that need to be cut up and assembled for tracing.

Photo 6: An art triangle, with the T-square I rule vertical lines for panel borders, parallel lines, angled lines, etc. I like a see-through triangle so I can see any lines on the paper beneath it.

Photo 7: the Ames lettering guide, which used to be a lettering standard tool before digital lettering changed the landscape. This and a T-square is how I rule lettering lines onto the paper or Bristol board. The Ames guide comes with paper instructions, I forget them all the time and usually just free-wheel it and make lots or parallel lines and wing it because my lettering isn't exactly by the book. But, basically, you turn the wheel to different settings to change the size of the lines you lay down for your lettering.

Photo 8: Inkmethis layout liner, a larger lettering guide that I bought from a calligraphy site. You can use this with a T-square -- and a mechanical pencil -- to make a ton of parallel lines for whatever you need a ton of parallel lines for. I haven't used this a ton because I haven't been lettering much of anything these past few years but I hope to get more use out of it in the future.

Photo 9: French curves for ruling, well, curved lines. I have six of these for a variety of lines.

Photo 10: Circle and oval guides. Often come in handy. I don't use these for lettering balloons, I think they look too stuff and mechanical when drawn that way. I like to free hand word balloons so they have some life to them and better match the rest of the art on the page.

Always remember that lettering is art. Anything that is put on the page is art, drawing, lettering, coloring. It all combines, it's all art on the page and should be treated as such. Mechanical-looking lettering can stop the eye dead and not mesh with the rest of the linework. One of these days I'll look for some of my better lettering pages and do some posts on how I finagle that stuff. (I have some pages that are all lettering, drawn to be dropped in digitally on the pages -- some of the better stuff I've done).

Photo 11: Drawing board. I bought one that is a bit bigger than I'd have liked, but it gets the job done. I like using it because I don't mind being as messy as I want on it. And it's great for drawing in bed or on a couch or in front of a crappy movie. If I start doing conventions again I'll pick up a smaller version to bring with me and probably swap them out. The large one I have can be awkward to sit down with.

That's all for this post. I think I have one more post in this series left -- I forgot to talk about erasers. And pencil sharpeners.

More later soon.