Author Archives: Scott Dawson

Books: How To Think When You Draw (and Write)

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Kickstarters I Have Known and Loved #2

After 2018 I started following things on Kickstarter and Patreon. After pledging to a Kickstarter project to create a clock-radio using actual nixie tubes for display, I started to look at descriptions of other projects.

One such project was a series of cookbooks of art and writing tutorials by the Etherington Brothers out of England. Lorenzo Etherington handles the drawing; Robin Etherington handles the writing.

Lorenzo has a very intriguing, very traditional style of drawing. It’s very 1940’s dieselpunk, all big internal-combustion engines strapped to race cars. It reminds me of the old CARtoons magazine I used to read when I was a kid, or the original Mad Magazine, or even some of Will Eisner’s work (for examples, see Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art).

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Books: How to Draw Black People (updated)

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Kickstarters I Have Known and Loved #3

It is very good to be able to look out into the world and see yourself reflected back.

As a writer and cartoonist, I want to be able to portray and ultimately connect with all sorts of people. I have been noticing that all my people drawings tend to look like Generic White People, just as my trees tend to look like Generic Maple Trees. I have to remember to explicitly make things look different, to match the variety of people (and trees) I actually see on the street. But how to do that?

A week or so ago, I stumbled across a very interesting Kickstarter. 

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Books: Malaak

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Kickstarters I Have Known and Loved #1

This was my first Kickstarter support.

Malaak is a series of comic books by French-Lebanese artist Joumana Medlej. It describes a Lebanon invaded by demonic spirits of war, and what the ancient guardians of the land must do to defend it.

In 2011 I was looking for drawing tutorials, and I stumbled across this incredibly-detailed chart of how to draw cats. Every type and variation of cat appearance was laid out in almost mathematical precision. Who could have done this?

I followed a link and discovered Cedarseed and Joumana Medlej. And a world of new colours and ideas.

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Useful books and Other Resources

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Various writing, story design, comics, art, and animation books. The beginnings of a list…

The Understanding Comics series by Scott McCloud:
Understanding Comics
Making Comics
Reinventing Comics
A pioneering exploration of what makes comics tick.

Drawing People by Joumana Medlej
A book remarkable for its examination of different skin colours and body forms of people from around the world. Look in Joumana’s shop for the ebook.

Digital Prepress for Comic Books by Kevin Tinsley.
Goes into the details of preparing comics for print.

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When Can I Use Real Names and Products?

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In the Devilbunnies universe, writers used the names of existing concepts, characters, products and companies. Some of them were associated with the Bunnies or their enemies:

For the Bunnies

For the Bunnies’ Opponents

  • Elmer Fudd (from Warner Brothers; lent his name to the anti-Bunny forces);
  • Moxie, Irn Bru, D&B (“uncute” drinks);
  • Vanilla extract (the Bunnies were actually supposed to be allergic or even burned by it);

In some cases the group authors took the name and ran with it.

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How I Colour a Comic in Photoshop

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This is how I build a colour comic in Photoshop.

Scan the original drawing.

I start by scanning a black-and-white drawing.

The drawing should be drawn with colouring in mind. Large dark areas are generally added during the colouring, so they should not be done as part of the black-and-white drawing.

The colouring style I describe here relies on using the ‘bucket’ tool to fill large areas; they can also be filled using brushes.

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Drawing Test

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This is a test of a slightly-different drawing technique.

Usually, I sketch in pencil, draw over it in black marker or ink, then scan that and clean it up in Photoshop. Afterwards, I add colour in Photoshop. This is how I did the rabbit background picture, and the four-page intro to Scaffoldworld.

It’s also a good way to make even quite a rough sketch presentable (this Toasterman sketch, for example).

Drawing of Toasterman trying to escape an underwater menace.

However, for Little Lost Part, I want to do something different.

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