Thought Bubble sequential art festival, Leeds

Sunday 22nd November...

Digital colouring in Photoshop & Painter
with Peter Doherty

Peter Doherty's digital colouring workshop gave an insight into his personal work-flow as he revealed some of the digital tricks that he uses in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Working as a comic artist and colourist for 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine means having to hit tight deadlines and through trial and error, Doherty has developed a fast way of working. Doherty flips between Painter and Photoshop to take advantage of the more natural, painterly and textured look art that is possible with Painter while taking advantage of Photoshops editing power.

Sidestepping Mark Chiarello's advice in The DC Comics Guide to Colouring and Lettering Comics (to work only in CMYK mode when colouring for publication), Doherty works in RGB mode to avoid any conflict when flipping between the software as Painter does not enjoy layer and screen blends in CMYK mode and data would be lost with multiple conversions from RGB to CMYK. He converts the image to CMYK mode at the end of the colouring process to prepare the finished artwork for print.




Doherty demonstrated how he uses layer masks and channels to give himself the option of editing sections of the artwork at any stage of the colouring process. A lot of comic book colourists work in 'flats' when preparing the artwork for publication. He prefers to work in channels as channels work in both Painter and Photoshop. He uses layer masks to separate figures from the background allowing him to paint sloppily and quickly. His work-flow is adapted to compliment his choice of digital art tools.



Some of Peter's artwork can be seen here: http://www.peterdoherty.net/

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Visual storytelling with Frank Quitely...

Frank Quitely and writer, Grant Morrison, worked together very closely to develop the aesthetic of their graphic novel, We 3. Using the layout and the page design as a storytelling tool, Quitely fragments one large scene into a series of panel borders that resemble doors to depict slices of time. The cat exists both inside and outside of the panel borders, leaping through slices in time. The soldiers remain inside the panel borders. Quitely and Morrison worked hard to construct a layout that would welcome repeated readings and the image was reworked several times before a visual solution was found that satisfied both the artist and the writer. The visual treatment shows the animal's heightened perception of time and maintains the flow of action by linking the separate panels with dynamic arabesques, depicting a scene of carnage as the soldiers become his prey. The bottom panel is divided by the silhouette of a tree and the composition reveals the personality traits of each animal; the cat remains distant and detached from the group, the dog seems loyal and concerned and the rabbit seems oblivious to it's surroundings.

Below: detail from We3, art by Frank Quitely and words by Grant Morrison

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Interview with Peter Doherty
at the Thought Bubble Festival, Leeds

Peter Doherty has been working as a professional comic artist for 2000AD since the early 1990s.



Can I ask you about how you work and your experiences of working in the UK comics industry?

PETER DOHERTY:

I broke into 2000AD in 1990. I broke in. I got to know people around here (in Leeds) actually. I met Duncan Digrado at radio (who I knew for years). He was working on stuff for Crisis; they were doing a fill-in on New Statesman; through him, I met John Smith - he lived up in York and so I met some writers (this was sort of the late 80's).

Because I knew them, I knew the people to ask to write me a little story. I did a story; that's how you got in; you couldn't just draw pin ups. I did two five page stories and they bought one so that's what got me in. I jumped in straight away so I had no apprenticeship, none of this trampin' 'round and all that sort of stuff. It was partly through design because I didn't do anything until I knew I was at least halfway decent.

These days I read the scripts and sometimes draw in a sketch book. I scribble in a sketch book and scan it in bits and put it together in Photoshop so you get the immediate idea of what the page will look like straight away.

Do you use a mixture of traditional and digital art?

These days when I colour the actual comics it's all digital art but, having said that, some of this stuff... I'll use quite a lot of textures. They might be scanned so I might use thins like scraps of paper (Chinese paper with a grain in it, that sort of stuff) or watercolour paper.

I use Corel Painter and I use Adobe Illustrator to letter. I use everything and anything, I don't care. I don't think my inking is all that good, so it's nice with digital, you're completely in control. I've never done it all digital I still quite like the feel of a pencil and a piece of paper.

But... if I could find a way of inking that was more efficient... but then I still quite like inking... but then I quite like painting...

Do you use brushes or pens to ink your artwork?

I use all sorts... you can use this sort of stuff (Faber-Castell artist pen) but the tip goes off them quickly, so I have to use a lot and it's very costly. When I started I was using dip pens and I'd rather use those but the problem is I'm a bit sloppy and I'd have too much ink at the end of the pen and there's just blobs of ink everywhere and I've spoilt something and can't get it off. When I used to do it on watercolour paper... I can't spoil the page as I need to paint on that as well. I really admire these people like Dave Gibbons; when he does stuff it's very clean and precise. I saw some Watchmen pages years ago and there's no white-out or anything, he knows what he's doing and he's very focused. Sean Phillips is quite like that as well; he does it and it's done well, but I'm not like that.

What kind of paper do you prefer to use for comic art?

With choosing paper (this is another reason to split the process up - especially now) I duplicate work. A friend of mines got one of those printers that's got pigmenting (so it's waterproof). He can print on watercolour paper for me and I can put watercolour over it. I can do a drawing on one sort of paper, print it out on another sort, print that out and colour it on another sort. I'm a sloppy worker so I can take things out of the process and I can split up the process so if I mess it up at any point I've not messed it up completely. The way I colour stuff with Photoshop and Painter is I have a series of selections and I save them in channel's so I can always go back and change stuff. It allows me to do what I want.


Do writers ever give you any page layouts?

John Smith would do that sort of stuff, but I know John and I ignore it because I know I can ring him up or email him the layouts and he'll tell me if they're wrong and usually they're not. Usually I've done it for a purpose.

Have writers reacted and added more to the finished script in response to the artwork that you give them?

Well, John Wagner does all of his subs after the artworks done, he goes through it and rewrites it. On the last episode of this Ratfink story (for the Megazine) he was getting layouts off me because I was quite late with it so he didn't see the finished artwork and some of it was quite vague. He'd ring me up to ask me what was in a particular panel just to clarify it but he'd change dialogue because you'd draw it and then the dialogue becomes redundant and you do it another way and you need to have a little more dialogue to clarify matters so that's quite good. With 2000AD with John Wagner, that's what he does because he wants his story to breathe properly. He knows what he wants his story to read like. I usually do a good job of telling the story because I see that as my job.