Ted Slampyak, illustrator of the Little Orphan Annie comic strip has posted a great tutorial on how he organizes, prepares, and draws each daily installment. It’s full of great tips (he made a font of his own handwriting to speed things up) and strategies (make the word balloons first, then build the drawing around them). The only thing he doesn’t cover is how to draw pupils in eyeballs.
As an illustrator, color is one of the things I struggle with most. (Also, proportion, composition, coming up with good ideas, and keeping the ink off my clothes.) Adobe has recently put together a site called Kuler, and it’s purpose is to help people come up with pleasing color palettes.
One of my rules in Pen and Link is that all software recommendations should be for both Windows and Mac. For Beautiful Dorena, I’m going to make an exception. This free, Mac-only painting program is so laugh-out-loud weird that I have to give it a mention.
All content © Matthew McElligott
