Francis Vallejo - Ink Techniques video

Mark McDonnell's sketchbook

This video is related to my last post on watching people work: Mark McDonnell has a nice Youtube channel with videos of him sketching. I like this one where he shows one of his sketchbooks, with great animals and characters.



He says this sketchbook is a Cachet, earthbound recycled sketchbook , ISBN # 1-56152-416-6, and it's great paper that can take a bit of punishment with wet media. He draws with Prismacolor markers and pencils. The black is a Gelly-Roll pen.

Comic tools blog

Comic tools is a great blog. This guy is very generous with his time and knowledge. Although the title is aimed at comickers this blog has loads of useful info for anyone who draws. I really like his anatomy tutorials, he has some really good tips and tricks for inventing characters and getting them to look right.

Make your own sketch pads

Instructables is a great site if you like to make stuff like I do. As I tend to hoard paper to draw on and had a ton of loose paper lying around I was pleased to find this Instructable : make a duct tape scratch pad.

This works really well and is perfect for making sketch pads, any size or paper type you want. I added cardboard covers to mine and folded the duct tape over the top to make them stronger. And if you do use thicker paper you need a lot more glue.

I made three sketch pads with this method and am running out of paper now so time to start hoarding again.

Nic Klein Takes Us Inside His Process

Nic Klein shows his process for painting Viking, a new series for Image comics in this interesting little article. He must work really fast to do two of these a month. I really like the mixture of an acrylic monotone base and digital colours.
I wrote about Nic a while ago on this blog.

Sketch magazine

Blue Line Pro art supplies have a magazine called Sketch about all things comics, they have some good articles on drawing amongst other things, although I think they have too many adverts.
There is also a very good forum with sections on pencilling , inking, colouring and Tips & tricks.

Pentel brush pen

I came across this pen on the Cool tools blog. I've tried various brush pens in the past and wasn't very impressed, but this one looks really good. It seems to be more like a real brush than a pen pretending to be a brush! I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has tried it.

How to Draw what you See

I found this tutorial on emptyeasel.com. This seems like a good site, mainly aimed at traditional materials and a bit of Photoshop. It is well set out and and easy to read. The idea of drawing what you see reminded me of this excellent article about drawing clutter on the Temple of the seven golden camels blog. I have quite alot of clutter, so when I sit down to sketch stuff the problem of how to get a decent drawing out of it all occurs frequently