Shading Cartoons With Markers – Video

A while back I did a video on shading cartoons in Photoshop, so I thought I’d also give you a look at shading my cartoons with markers as well.

Enjoy:

Video Transcription

Hi there, this is Mark Anderson from andertoons.com, and I’m going to show you how I shade my cartoons using markers. We’re going to jump right in here. I have got a batch of cartoons that I’ve already inked, they are all about school by the way. And I am using Prismacolor cool grey markers, I think this one it’s hard to tell but I think this is a 30%.

I usually let the ink dry for a little while, although if I am in a hurry, the markers or the brush pen that I use dries pretty quickly, so I can usually jump right in and shade right away. But if I have the time I like to give the ink just a little bit time to set, so I can make sure that it doesn’t smear. I’ve got four cartoons on a single page of, I don’t know, this is 8X10 or, oh it’s 9X12, I believe it’s 9X12 Borden & Riley Marker Bleed Proof Paper, and I tend to work really small and I try to be efficient. So I’ve got four cartoons on the one sheet of paper here that I am shading, and again about being efficient, I am using the same marker to do washers on all four cartoons at once.

So I’ll shade one cartoon with the 30%, and then I will flip the paper around like so and then I will continue shading with 30% until I figure out I’ve got over 30% is done, and then I will move onto 40, 50, 60, what have you. I don’t do well a lot of shading, you can see here like there is a desk that I am not shading, you couldn’t find, there we go. I’m not going to shade all of the grass behind this, I am not going to shade the sidewalk. I tend to stay pretty light, it’s just personal taste plus it’s a lot less shading and there is a lot less marker work to do.

It’s just one of those things that has evolved over the years, I used to shade a lot more and I used to shade a lot heavier and darker and as time is going on, I tend to almost never shade the background on my own cartoons. I also work pretty fast, as you can tell. I’m going to shade four cartoons here about 7 minutes from beginning to end. I know a lot of people shade all sorts of different ways, ink washers and of course, I also have a video where I’ve shade the cartoons on the computer using some custom patterns that I created in Photoshop, but even that takes longer than most because then I can undo, and oh I’m not sure if that’s quite right, there is a real organic, real feel to working like this that I really like. You are not getting the marker in all of the places and you get variance, and sometimes it’s darker and sometimes it’s lighter, and it’s just there is a real feeling to it that I can’t get any other way. So if I can shade this way, I prefer to.

I’m using my iPhone, I apologize for this sort of shakiness and sometimes if the light tends to change, I’ve got my iPhone, I’ve got a special clamp clipped to my lamp on my drafting table that’s taking this, which is pretty good video. Now that I’m looking at it, it takes a little bit to see the product that you are shading through the iPhone while you are shading it, so this isn’t like 100% natural, so I tend to get really close, I have bad eyes, I have terrible vision. So when I am shading I’m right on top of it, and maybe it’s because I work so small, I don’t know, but I tend to like get my nose, I’ve actually gotten like my nose print on art while shading that I have to write a little note, you know remove nose print in Photoshop.

But this, I’m actually back a little bit because I need to make room for the camera, so you are not going to see any nose prints today on the art. We’re finishing up a lot of these here, I am just doing some detail work, there is my giant hand, looks like I am doing some darker work. I tend to work with again Prismacolor cool grey markers, and 30% is about the lightest, I’ll go, I find that that scans pretty light. I used to go 20% and 10%, but then I’d do all of these different percents, and then I would scan them and pretend the 20 just wouldn’t show up.

So over the years, I’ve gotten it down to be between 30 and 60, if I need something really black, I’ll do 70 or 80 but that’s pretty rare. Now I’ve got my little fixed notes there, and I need to fix the A in that formula on the chart board via the back of the a little bit. I’ll write myself notes like that, I tend not to draw over, again I draw really fast too, so little mistakes, I’ll write myself a note and then I’ll Photoshop out any problems.

Doing just a little bit of shading back there on the periodic table, let’s now go and see, looking to see if I, doing the little 30% line work on that sidewalk to make that pop a little bit, oh hey we are shading the background, breaking my own, I didn’t expect that I would but then you have it. You can see I’ve got the caption written in pretty sloppily below, that’s just to remind myself the caption. There has been times I have done a cartoon and inked it and shade it and then I didn’t write the caption down on the final art, and I had thought, oh I will find this sketch out or I will remember it, and I never do, and then I have a cartoon where I am like, oh, oh what was that caption, it’s driving me crazy.

Well we are finishing up here, there is four cartoons, and we are coming up to the end of the video, hope you liked it, feel free to see all of my cartoons on andertoons.com, there is thousands and thousands there, and I hope you enjoyed this look at me shading my cartoons with markers. I hope you learned something, I had a lot of fun, and I’ll see you next time.

Teacher Cartoons For Teacher Appreciation Week

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, so I thought I’d share a bunch of my teacher cartoons to thank all the educators out there (my lovely wife included) for all of their hard work! Enjoy:

Teacher Cartoon #6351 by Andertoons

I hear a lot from my wife about kids that are approaching standards, meeting standards, exceeding standards, etc… So this cartoon was sort of a no-brainer.

Teacher Cartoon #6356 by Andertoons

I was originally going to do this cartoon as a piano teacher one, but I thought band directors might appreciate a cartoon too. (BTW, I know there’s also alto clef, tenor clef, etc… but for the purpose of this joke I just stuck to treble and bass.)

Teacher Cartoon #6359 by Andertoons

I hear my wife talk about her lesson plans a lot, so it was really fun to draw this bedraggled looking teacher being comforted by one of her students.

Teacher Cartoon #6362 by Andertoons

Copier manufacturers, I know schools make a lot of copies, but copiers have been around for a good while now. How about making one that doesn’t break down once a week? Please?

Teacher Cartoon #6363 by Andertoons

Another take on standards; I think “standoffish” makes this work for me.

Teacher Cartoon #6364 by Andertoons

As a parent I certainly have opinions about my kids’ education, but I try not to go quite this far.

Teacher Cartoon #6365 by Andertoons

I probably spent a good half hour looking at formulas I thought might be readable as some sort of texting acronym (LOL, WTF, etc…). Any thoughts on what that might stand for?

Teacher Cartoon #6366 by Andertoons

Being the husband of a teacher I’ve spent some time in teachers’ lounges, and lemme tell you, comfy they’re not. So why the lounge moniker?

Teacher Cartoon #6367 by Andertoons

Dogs eating homework seems so last century. Do they eat PowerPoints and PDFs now?

Teacher Cartoon #6368 by Andertoons

Ah…  Periodic table humor…

Teacher Cartoon #6369 by Andertoons

Listening to my wife talk about school sometimes is exhausting because so much of it is acronyms. I try to keep up, but I think they mint new ones daily. Help!

Teacher Cartoon #6370 by Andertoons

I’m proud to say that my permission slip signing record is perfect so far.

Teacher Cartoon #6371 by Andertoons

This cartoon took a while to figure out. I had the drawing first, but the caption came really slowly. It wasn’t until I thought “why is he giving her so many options” that it finally clicked – it doesn’t really matter why, just that he did.

Teacher Cartoon #6372 by Andertoons

I’m not much of a mashup kind of guy. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a good one, I just prefer to create content from scratch the old-fashioned way.

Teacher Cartoon #6373 by Andertoons

My daughter just got a guinea pig for her birthday, so a class pet cartoon wasn’t far behind.

Teacher Cartoon #6374 by Andertoons

There’s a lot of educational theories and approaches out there. Currently there seems to be a lot of emphasis on almost constant positive reinforcement. Which is fine I guess, but it was pretty much begging for a cartoon like this one.

Teacher Cartoon #6375 by Andertoons

I remember doing a lot of simplifying back in the day, and I always wondered if there was some guy in a room somewhere taking basic math and just making it harder. Needless to say math was not my strongest subject.

Teacher Cartoon #6376 by Andertoons

I like this kid’s thinking.

Teacher Cartoon #6377 by Andertoons

We didn’t have homework folders when I was a kid, but now they seem to be all the educational rage. Call me a traditionalist, but the old backpack stuffed with crinkled papers works just fine, thank you!

Teacher Cartoon #6378 by Andertoons

Drawing this poor tired teacher is some of the most fun I’ve had drawing in some time.

Teacher Cartoon #6379 by Andertoons

To quote Daffy Duck, “pronoun trouble.”

Teacher Cartoon #6380 by Andertoons

I’m proud to say this actually is not the only photosynthesis cartoon I’ve done!

Teacher Cartoon #6381 by Andertoons

I tend to stay away from politics in my cartoons, but this one is non-specific enough that I’m OK with it.

Teacher Cartoon #6382 by Andertoons

I’m honestly really curious what this kid wrote about.

Teacher Cartoon #6383 by Andertoons

Another cartoon that I researched a bit. I’d originally had more text about The Renaissance on the board, but decided that it read better if you weren’t distracted by more text.

Teacher Cartoon #6384 by Andertoons

Semicolons are funny. They just are.

Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed them all! Feel free to check out all of my teacher cartoons, and happy Teacher Appreciation Week everyone!

A Few R2D2s

On Monday I posted my How To Draw A Cartoon R2D2 tutorial and it’s been pretty popular online! So I wanted to share just a few that I got back:

Draw R2D2

Above are from Popcandy (left) and Horrorthon (right), a few more…

Draw R2D2

Draw R2D2

…and then there was this combination of all of my recent tutorials (elephant, leprechaun, bunny) that’s probably my favorite so far:

Draw R2D2 2

Thanks everyone, and stay tuned for more tutorials!

Cartoon Shading in Photoshop – Cartooning Tutorial

Normally when I shade a cartoon I use my good old Prismacolor cool greys. But lately I’ve been doing a lot of custom cartoons where a client could ask for changes to the final art, so I shade in Photoshop using some custom patterns I made from those aforementioned Prismacolors.

It’s not glamorous, and there’s certainly more educational Photoshop tutorials available, but if you want to see a cartoonist laying down some shading while watching MST3K: The Movie, here you go:

Video Transription

Hi there, this is Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com and I am going to show you how I shade a cartoon in Photoshop. The first thing I do is I use an action that I had created to move all of my layers around, I will show you how to do that some other time, but what it does is it moves the ink to the top layer and then creates some layers underneath that makes the ink layer a multiply layer. I also created some patterns here for myself using my markers and the paper that I normally use and I scanned that in and created some patterns to emulate what I would normally do.

The reason I am not shading this using my regular marker and papers that I would use for my regular cartoons, is this is a custom cartoon that I am doing for a client, so I like to use my Photoshop markers so that I can create layer after layer after layer and then if the client requires something different or like a person’s hair color changed or we need to do this or that, I can go back and change it without having to redraw the original art, so that’s why I am doing this.

And of course I’ve got Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie playing over here on the right side. Shading isn’t my favorite thing to do, it’s sort of a necessary evil, so when I have a lot of shading to do – poor Dr. Forrester – I put a movie on sort of in a little window there to, that I can listen to or you know tune into here and there again.

So here I am shading, let me get back to the actual shading part; I use again my pattern brush and the eraser, those are the two tools that I really use when I create different layers. So this first layer here is sort of a light grey, I think it is a 30% grey, for her hair and for the computer here. Now I have created another layer and I am going to use a slightly darker pattern for the chair, so it is pretty simple, you just sort of lay the shading in as nicely as you can – now I see the, because I put that layer underneath the other layer when I color over by that computer that shading goes underneath that layer so that you can’t see it.

This is pretty standard Photoshop coloring shading sort of thing, but if you do not, you know if you do not know you know how…I am going to choose another slightly darker color for his chair to sort of make him pop a little bit. I’ve noticed sometimes I have problems, I use a Wacom tablet, and sometimes it seems like it has a problem, maybe it is Photoshop, maybe it’s the tablet recognizing like that I want a variable brush size and I have all the settings set up correctly I am pretty sure, and sometimes it just, it does not seem to recognize it, I don’t know what that is – if anybody knows, if there is something that I am missing here let me know, I would appreciate it.

So I am sort of erasing around his arm here and getting this shading more and more correct and this is going pretty well, there is actually not a whole lot to shade in this cartoon, which is why I chose it, sometimes especially with a crowd scene, or something like that there can be a lot a lot a lot of shading and I did not want to show you half an hour of ‘look, I am shading, now I am erasing, now I am shading, now I am erasing, now I am shading, now I am erasing’, this is already going to be tedious enough, but I will try to make it interesting for you.

So I think I am on my third layer now, and again I’ve taken that third layer and put it underneath the first two, the ink layer on top is set to multiply so that you can see things under the ink. And then I do my shading layers underneath that and they are all set to normal and then I have a background layer of just pure white. And then of course I have other layers for laying in the captions, and other things. There was another layer for that eBay logo but I had just merged that in there.

Okay, doing a little detail there on the desk making sure that that all makes sense. I left her shirt and her phone white because the desk and the chair have already been shaded. Okay I am just doing a little bit of detail work on the supposed eBay page. It doesn’t need to be detailed there, in fact it’s better if it is not because you don’t want people asking ‘oh what is she looking at, is she looking at a purse, is she looking at a toy, or is she looking at, what is she looking at’, it does not really matter you just need it to register as eBay, also that eBay logo is really big, I know, but you need it to register and read quickly, so you sort of fudge how big it actually is, so that the reader can actually read it and understand that she is on eBay, for the purpose of this cartoon.

Okay, now I am doing his tie, and I am sort of erasing his hand out of the tie – I try to be as detailed as I can when I lay in the shading because then it, it sort of, you can either be detailed when you put in the shading, or you can worry about the detail when you are erasing, and I sort of go in-between there. You try to stay in the lines as much as you can, that’s, that would be a nice feature on Photoshop is stay in the lines, although most of my lines don’t connect, so that’s not really going to work, but it would be nice if it could sort of intuit that.

So for the Adobe people get to work on that or if someone knows, again if you know how to do that and I am just missing it, let me know, drop me an email. Okay, doing the desk here, we are getting towards the end of this one; this is a pretty quick shade. Here I am sort of doing that, doing his desk here, I will go ahead and do some erasing, sort of get that edge there so that it does not look too jagged or you know. I am erasing here on the top of the desk, still watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 the movie. This is all the intro they haven’t started, the movie is really good if you have not, this Island Earth, this is a great, it’s not an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 but it is the movie that they made, really fun.

Alright back to, back on task here. I did some shading and some erasing that I didn’t like, so I you know controlled, I think it is Ctrl+Shift+Z to go back a couple of steps, so I am taking another shot at that. I would prefer to do all of the shading like right on the actual paper with the actual art, but like I said you never know, I have had enough times where a client has come back and wanted something changed that I’ve sort of learned my lesson, so it is not as organic a look as I would like, but what you make up for in being able to go back and fix things, totally-totally makes this worth it.

So looks like we are just about done, so this is the final version of this and I think it was only two, three, four layers of shading and I think that looks pretty good, so I will add the caption later, save this for the client and send – oh and look the movie is starting – so I think that is my cue to leave, thank you for watching, make sure you visit Andertoons.com for lots of great cartoons and other fun stuff. And have a great day.