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Old 04-05-2007, 12:58 PM
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Hdesign Hdesign is offline
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Forget the air markers, I've used them and they're not much better than using good ol' Prismacolor pastel chalk. They just cost more.

Thom Taylor's book goes through all of this but I do it a little different. I scrape the chalk with an exacto knife so that I have a nice pile of colored powder. Take a gauze pad (common at any pharmacy section in Walmart) and rub it into the scraped chalk. Wipe it right onto the drawing and then erase the edges you want to be crisp. Use Prismacolor colored pencils for the detail work like shut lines and edge highlights. Do all your colored pencil work after markers because it gets ruined if you do it the other way around. Use white gouache paint for the "pigeon poop" hot spots last.

I use Bienfang Grafix 360 Marker Paper but I'm thinking of switching to LetraMax brand because I'm sick of the marker bleeding on edges. I've heard LetraMax is better for that. Both are pretty expensive for the size I use. 14x17 is the smallest I'd go because you just can't get the details in a smaller scale. The problem is that I have to scan pieces of the rendering and put them back together in Photoshop. Major pain in the butt.

As far as Corel Draw, I have it at work and used it twice in 8 years. Illustrator seems to do the same thing only better but I use that for Tshirts/logos and vector based graphics, not renderings. Photoshop is the way to go if you can swing the $750 for it. Photoshop Elements is OK but it's very, very limited. Even if you can buy an older verson of Photoshop, you'll have fun with it. I have 6.0 on my PC and it's great, the later versions don't really add any features that help me out so I'm fine with this version.

Bottom line is, don't worry about the digital stuff right now. Stick with doing it the traditional way. You need to learn to walk before you run. All the digital effects in the world can't make a mediocre drawing look killer. You're on a good path right now, it just takes time.

Unfortunately, in the art tools world, you get what you pay for. You don't want your supplies to limit you.
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