I’ve used the pen tool with the G-pen nib in Clip Studio Paint in this drawing of Kershaw’s Newsagents, Horbury, in 1938. The effect is very similar to my regular pen and ink drawings, although bringing the whole drawing together wasn’t so straightforward; although I appreciated being able to zoom in on the different sections of the drawing as I worked, this did mean that it felt a bit like working on a jigsaw: I’d concentrate on one area, such as an edge, but I’d lose sight of the picture of a whole as I did that.
Adding colour was also unfamiliar to me, compared with using my watercolours. I’ve stuck to one brush to get the feel for that particular setting, but the result feels like colouring using a felt-tip pen.
The whole exercise has been useful for getting used to the range of marks that I can produce with pen and brush in the program. I’m sure that I’ll find it useful.
Tracing from a vintage postcard in Clip Studio Paint.
I recently joined a local history group on Facebook, focussing on Horbury and neighbouring Sitlington. This newsagents caught my attention; it appears in the left-hand corner of a postcard of Queen Street, Horbury, one of series which Helen Bickerdike, administrator of the group, has been posting.
I’ve been doing a bit or research into the film titles on the poster for the Savoy Cinema and into what I can decipher of the newspapers and journals. I’ll explain more when I finish the picture and can pick out some of the details but it must have been taken a year or two before the outbreak of World War II, perhaps in January, 1938.
The shop, which was Noble’s Newsagents in until the late 1960s, appears, second from the left, on the cover of my booklet.
Like the digital painting of Coxley Beck which I posted the other day, I’m doing this as a way of getting thoroughly familiar with the program Clip Studio Paint.
When I was writing my local history booklets, such as Around Old Horbury (1998), I did a lot of drawings like this, initially by sitting on street corners with my sketchbook, but later using my own photographs as reference.
I had a unique opportunity when I redrew the cover illustration as a wrap-around design for a china mug. When I arrived in Horbury, one Sunday morning, I discovered that they’d closed the High Street for resurfacing and I was able to sit on my fishing stool in the middle of the road, to get a perfect view of the sweeping curve at the lower end of Queen Street.
Link
Around Old Horbury on my Willow Island Editions website (£2.95, post free in the U.K.)
This digital painting has turned out looking like the starting point for one of my acrylic on hardboard paintings, before I’d started adding details of tree, water and ferns.
Coxley Beck is running opaque with sediment where it passes through an old mill race at Horbury Bridge. I’ve draw this on my iPad Pro, using an Apple Pencil in the Clip Studio Paint program.
I pasted a photograph that I’d taken this afternoon into the lowest layer of my Clip Studio Paint document, then added a layer for pencil above it. So that I could see where I was going with the pencil, I partially faded out the photograph by using the opacity slider for that layer.
I traced the trees and the line of the beck in pencil, then hid the photograph by clicking its eye symbol in the layer palette and drew using the pen tool, using my pencil tracing as a guide.
Paint Layer
Once I’d finished with the pencil layer, I hid it and added a new layer for paint. In order not to paint over my pen lines, I added the paint layer below the pen layer.
As I worked, I kept referring back to the photograph layer, now with the opacity slider set back at 100%, and used the eye-dropper tool to sample colour. I couldn’t always get the colour that I wanted, so I also used some of the standard swatches and the colour wheel.
In the odd spots that I hadn’t painted, the default white background of what Clip Studio refers to as ‘paper’ showed through, making Coxley Beck look more sparkly than it actually does this afternoon, so I added a background layer of a suitably muddy brown.
Pen, initial pencil sketch and first attempts at adding colour.
It reminds me of when I painted in acrylic and I’d start by paintingthe whole canvas in a neutral light grey, so that I wasn’t misled when mixing tones by a brilliant white background.
I used various digital pens, finishing up with the textured pen and various versions of the watercolour brush, including dense watercolour.
I look forward to trying the technique with another subject.
We got a couple of funny looks as we photographed this blank Pig Pig sketchbook at Aysgarth, but there is a purpose: I can use it as the background for my Dalesman nature diary next autumn.
My autumn sketchbook work isn’t very impressive; between online courses and fitting in my ten thousand paces a day, I haven’t given myself much time for drawing, which is a shame as we’ve taken short breaks in the Lake District, the Dales and on the Yorkshire Coast.
We’re now into winter proper, specks of snow are drifting down over the garden and I’ll be quite happy to stick to day trips for the next couple of months.
Rush hour at Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale, in November, white shorthorn.
We saw large flocks of fieldfares one misty morning on our Dales break in Langstrothdale but we’ve seen very few on our home patch. On our regular visits to Nostell Priory, we’ve seen flocks of crows and rooks on the grassland, along with a few mistle thrushes. As it has been such a good year for berries, perhaps our winter thrushes are still foraging in the hedgerows.
Lower Falls, Aysgarth, 2 November.
Tufted ducks and gadwall have joined the resident mallards and Canada geese on lakes and there are now two or three pairs of goosanders beginning to gather in their regular spot on the quieter side of the Middle Lake.
Fern-leaved beech, the Menagerie, Nostell Priory, 8 November.
The grey squirrels – all of them looking sleek and bushy-tailed – all seem to be engaged in caching their sweet chestnuts for the winter. We haven’t seen many examples of them chasing each other, prior to mating.
More practice in drawing on my iPad with an Apple pencil and, as I’m using Clip Studio Paint, I’ve got the option of framing the drawing in a ruled border.
I had intended to add an ink layer but decided that pencil was more appropriate for the relaxed subject matter.
There are so many options available to create different effects when using a digital brush but, until I’ve got more familiar with the process, I’m keeping things simple, using the standard settings for the entire drawing.
Drawing all those frames for my flick-book cartoons has helped me to feel at ease using Clip Studio Paint on the iPad. One advantage the iPad is that you can zoom in to work on details with a pinching movement of two fingers and you can rotate the whole drawing, simply by rotating two fingers. These two actions were useful when it came to writing in all the titles of the books.
Once the iPad knows that you’re drawing with an Apple Pencil, it rejects any finger movements it detects as drawing but still responds to any gestures, such as rotation and zooming in.
Paper, Pen & Pencil
There are four layers in my original Clip Studio file: the default paper background (plain white); pencil, for my initial drawing; colour, using the watercolour brush and pen, using the ‘real G-pen’.
To make it more like a real sketchbook drawing, I left my original pencil lines visible. If I’d been aiming for finished-looking illustration, I could have removed all the pencil work with a single click of the mouse: no meticulous rubbing out with a soft art eraser.
As the light faded, I drew one of the ash trees at the edge of the wood using a new version of Clip Studio Paint for iPad. For the next few weeks, there’s an opportunity to give it a six month free trial.
It feels so much more direct than using the iPad with a wifi link to the same program running on my main computer and I appreciate the thought that has gone into redesigning the interface to make it more suitable for a tablet.
I started with a pencil drawing then, on a new layer, added a suggestion of colour, finishing with an ink layer for drawing with the G-pen.
It’s been a month since we had a weekend at home and my desk top is in need of sorting out but how could I resist drawing these tottering piles of books and magazines?
I’ve drawn it with an Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro. I’m using is Clip Studio Paint EX on my iMac, which is connected to the iPad by wifi through the program Astropad 3. Sometimes pen and sketchbook just isn’t enough!
I like trying to learn new programs and I thought that the best way was just to launch into it and do the simplest of drawings. I say ‘new’ programs but I’ve been trying to get proficient in Clip Studio Paint, formerly Manga Studio for the last five years.
Useful to have the option of next day delivery as I needed these Pink Pig sketchbooks in a hurry. It’s not that I’m short of sketchbooks but the new format for my Dalesman articles is A5 portrait.
I ordered a batch of Pink Pig’s Posh Eco sketchbooks with smooth Ameleie 270 gsm watercolour paper. Hope that the fresh sketchbooks inspire me to get back into regular drawing.
My friend John Welding has, so far, been out drawing every day for the Inktober challenge. He’s been using a Pilot Parallel Pen to good effect so when I spotted one in the studio, I thought that I’d give it a go. It must be one that I used for calligraphy as it’s filled with red ink.
I’ll stick to my Lamy Safari and Vista pens but it’s good to occasionally try different media.
7th September, 10.50 a.m.: Two buzzards land on the grassy embankment of Whitley Reservoir. A smaller bird – it looks like a kestrel – swoops down on them and they fly off after a minute or so.
11th September: The view changes every few minutes as grey curtains of rain sweep down from the hills across the Calder valley.
18th September: Just one more drawing of the view from Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour at Whitley, a regular date to meet up for a coffee with Barbara’s brother.
28th September: But we do visit other cafes: here’s the view from the Seed Room Coffee Shop and Bistro in Overton, looking across the Smithy Brook valley to Thornhill Edge.
14th September: And we do get even further afield, I made a quick sketch of the old lime kilns at Rheged visitor centre, Penrith, on a brief visit to the Lake District. Two grey wagtails flitted about on the rocks by the nearby pond.
Rheged was a good stop for us: after an hour driving through the Dales and along the M6, it gave us an opportunity for a short walk around the centre and along the adjacent country lane. You can’t do that at some motorway services.
Adding colour was also unfamiliar to me, compared with using my watercolours. I’ve stuck to one brush to get the feel for that particular setting, but the result feels like colouring using a felt-tip pen.
