Mouse Inks: First Drybrush Experiment

So here's my first attempt to bring dry brush Into my illustration work. The finished line art with be colored, and there will be watercolor texture painted underneath it. I've been frustrated lately with the limits of straight contour art, and I wanted to expand the tonal range of my renderings and give them a more painterly look.



for this I used a mixture of FW burnt umber acrylic ink and Dr. Martins ink.

Photoshop Nonsense

Then I scanned the image and made a clipping path on photoshop to turn it into line art. Some people don't know this but you can get a full tonal range in your clipping path if you make a clipping path of a monochrome tonal drawing or painting. This way you can color the tonal drawing, or parts of the tonal drawing by coloring on the path layer. Then you can pop anything underneath it--flat color, watercolor textures. Hopefully this will provide a rich painted look. In this case I didn't feel the line was dark enough, so I doubled up the images to beef it up.