How I Made This Week's Cartoon
I start in Photoshop CC using one layer named "sketch." With a blue hued brush tool, I sketch the outline of the cartoon. Then I add a second layer called "ink." I use a 10 pt black pressure sensitive brush to add the line art.
Here's the original cartoon taken from my sketchbook (that furry thing is Bailey getting in the way). You might also notice the hundred different potential captions. I'm still not convinced I chose the best one, but hey, you've gotta pull the trigger eventually.
First layer is the sketched cartoon using a blue hued pressure sensitive brush tool. I add the caption using the text feature, (make sure the spelling is correct!). Later I'll reduce the text's transparency to about 25% and trace over it by hand. This gives the text a line art quality that still looks straight.
This is the basic line drawing after I've sketched out the whole cartoon in blue. I'll create a copy of this layer and name the top layer "color." I like to copy the line art layer because if I fudge up on the color layer, at least I can go back to the original line art and start again. Also, in Photoshop, utilizing the two layers allows me to use the paint bucket tool. This makes coloring super efficient as I just plop my usual colors on the page.
The last stage is shading, which I forgot to take a photo of. Basically I create a layer in-between the line art and color layers. I use a very dark gray and go over the areas I want to shade, Then when I'm satisfied, I reduce that layer's transparency and it comes out looking like....
This!
