[1] Rough line art

I make a new layer for line art above the layer folder containing my rough draft.

 

I’m good at paying attention to the overall piece, but I have a tendency of working less efficiently when I try to draw a lot of complicated things at once. For that reason, I’ll move forward by drawing little by little with simple shapes.

This way, I don’t need to draw perfectly from the start. I adjust how I want to draw each part as I go, and it doesn’t matter if it looks a little sloppy.

 

Once I’ve finished the rough lines, I select the line art layer and go to the [Layer property] palette > [Effect] and change the [Layer color] to a light blue.

 

[2] Clean line art

I make a new layer above the rough line art and draw the line art again.

This layer will be merged with the paint layers at the end, so I don’t focus on making the line art perfect.

I’m satisfied as long as the shapes are clear, so I don’t worry about overlapping lines or the line thickness.

 

To draw the circles and ovals, I place [Figure ruler] > [Ellipse] rulers on the layer and use those.

Once the basic shape is obtained with line drawing, I will draw the decoration little by little next.

It’s helpful to draw decorative details at the line art stage so that the details will stay delicate and the color won’t get too thick in the later painting stages.

 

Hint:

The purple lines in the above images are the Figure rulers. (These lines are purple in the default settings.) You can trace this ruler with a pen or brush to draw perfect ellipses with the same brush effect.

 

To make an ellipse ruler, select the [Ruler] tool > [Special ruler], then in the [Tool Property] palette, change the [Figure] setting to [Ellipse].

You can drag on the canvas to create any ellipse ruler you want. Hold down the Shift key while dragging to create a perfect circle.

 

Now I’ve finished inking the character.