To anyone who uses ONLY a computer to produce artwork- some ?s

Hey artists, since the old days, this forum has really started to show alot of really good work, so I think I may find some info. I actually am a good BW illustrator, but I am not looking to do any mixing of scanned originals and digital coloring.

Question #1: If you use a tablet or mouse to produce artwork (meaning either you draw with the tablet or mouse only, or you scan art and then Re-Draw it all the way digital- not using the original scan at all in the finished piece) what program do you use to do your line art? That's the one thing I really don't have a 'best practice' to do. I have an ex that is a really good color designer using illustrator, but she doesn't draw, so no help there on this one. Right now, I do all sorts of mouse-drawn stuff, but since I do it in MSPaint (because they are silly web comics that have no views outside of the 'Unrelated section' on this forum), I don't really experiment doing my originals otherwise. It's 1/2 laziness and 1/2 for old times sake- long story. I want to do B&W line art that I can import at a high res into Photoshop (or maybe I'll try Painter).

Question #2: How much do you guys use 'Layers' (in my case it's Photoshop layers) when processing/coloring your finished work?

Question #3: How do you do your gradients?

Any of your guy's expert advice is most appreciated.

If you have a tablet, you might as well draw in photoshop.

If you want to scan in sketches and completely recreate them in-computer, Illustrator is pretty easy (if you don't care about varying your line weight). The other plus to Illustrator is being able to easily reuse or resize stuff without having to worry about resolution or whatever. You can export whatever you do as a jpeg and use it in Photoshop...but if you are going to draw in Illustrator, you almost might as well color it in Illustrator also.

The comic is hilarious, by the way.

I do architecture, so often times for tracing scans i use autocad, its more of an architectural program, dunno why just find it easier and more flexible to do line works than in photoshop, probably just me though. After what i want is traced i can adjust the line weights or whatever and take it into photoshop to shade/ colour it. Good thing is that in autocad you can build it in 3d if you really want to once its all traced then import that to 3d max for rendering. Not sure if this applies to the type of stuff your planning to do. And i have no idea if you can use a tablet.

To buy a tablet is a great invest if you really want to try the real potential of the digital illustration, I started to use it like 5 years ago with a genius tablet because you know they are really cheap in comparison with the waccom tablets wich are the real thing

IMO the best programS to do lineart are OpenCanvas and Alias Sketch Book, they are really cool and uses a great feature, you can actually to rotate your canvas like you do it in the real life, this can be done in Painter too, but its way too complicated for me also OC and ASB are really cheap too, also you could try art rage, wich is free and have some amazing features, personally I use Photoshop and Open Canvas to do all my paints and sometimes the others, also the most of nowdays programs can export into PSD format, with layers and all.

I always try to use the minimum number of layers since I prefer to work on a LARGE canvas in order to get more details, so the most of my art work have 2 or 3 layers, 1 for the line art and other for the color and maybe other additional.

the best way IMO to get transitions is with the pen pressure itself, you can low the opacity and the flow (if you are working in PS) and get the gradient by applying more or less pressure, also you could help yourself with the smudge and blur tools, but they are not too accurancy

hope this helps you it kinda works for me

Ah, very nice suggestions guys. I still have a tablet, but I bought it on a shopping spree at Fry's electronics- and because I was trying to buy as much shit as I could with $1000, I bought a cheapo tablet. I should have got a decent one haha. It kills me, because I bought a $500 portable air conditioner that broke 1/2 way through summer. The long and the short of it is that the tablet (and even more- the battery operated stylus) sucks ass.

I am planning to do my online comic (the serious one) as soon as I find a method that's a mix of ease-of-use and high quality.

So keep the suggestions coming guys. I really appreciate them.

My suggestion?

Listen to Gowcaizer carefully. Guy does fucking awesome work.