Photoshop Selections

Part 2

Lasso

The Lasso tool is one of the ways we can make more intricate selections. There are actually 2 lasso tools: the freeform version and the polygon version. The flyout (hold down the mouse key over the tool) will show the version not currently in use.

The freeform lasso traces your selection as you hold the mouse button and drag around the outline of your selection. When the mouse button is released, the selection closes itself  using a direct line from the release point to the start point.

With the polygon lasso, best results are usually achieved with a series of mouse clicks, drawing the overall shape with a clicks and short lines.

Pen

The Pen tool comes with 5 options in the flyout: the basic pen, the selection arrow, add point pen, delete point pen and the convert point tool.

Vaguely similar to the lasso tools, the pen differs by drawing with points or nodes that have handles, creating Bezier curves which can be fine-tuned to create intricate curves later with the other pen tools or move tool as needed.

To draw a Bezier curve with the pen tool, click and drag the resulting handles to position the curve.

Reposition the node or control handles to modify the curve as needed using the Direct Selection tool, or change the curve node to a corner node with the Convert Node tool, by clicking the node once. Add nodes to a path or subtract them by clicking with the plus or minus versions of the pen.

Flip Jig

In preparation for some video posts showing how I draw my cartoons, I thought I’d show how I’ve rigged a swing arm lamp, minus the bulb and shade, with a flexible rubber tripod for a Flip digital camcorder. The articulated legs of the tripod wrap around the head of the lamp and hold the camera in place very securely. The arm of the lamp has a couple of tension knobs that lock it in place right over my drawings.

If you’re familiar with the Flip, you can see the camera is upside down relative to the drawings, but I’ll be using iMovie to edit and rotate the video so that it appears right side up.

Drawing Tablet

So you think you might benefit from using a tablet instead of a mouse for cartooning? Well, to tell the truth up front, I wouldn’t work without one. It’s convenient, feels natural, and gives much more control when compared to working with a mouse, and there are a number of things a tablet will do that are impossible or nearly so with a traditional pen or brush.

If you are using Photoshop with just a mouse, you are missing out on a lot of features that a tablet makes possible. Beyond that, and in more practical terms, many users swear that their symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome caused by using a mouse have been eliminated by switching to a tablet.

A tablet is fairly easy to work with if you have a reasonable amount of eye/hand coordination, and if you are an artist, that should be a reasonable assumption. The tablet proportions can be set to approximate your screen, making it easy to navigate. In other words, if you touch the middle of the tablet with the pen, the cursor will jump to the middle of the screen.

Or if you prefer, the settings can be altered to act in the same fashion as an ordinary mouse, requiring you to sweep the cursor from one point to the next. Once you have established your preference and found a comfortable position for the tablet on your desk, it quickly becomes second nature to pick up the pen and begin working with nary a glance to the tablet itself. It simply becomes an extension of your hand.

Although the great majority of my cartoons begin as pencil sketches on paper and go through the entire process of inking and scanning, sometimes it is faster for simple or smaller images to skip the paper step and be drawn completely with the tablet. This eliminates pencil smudges, stray lines and a lot of the cleanup time needed during the scanning process, but even though it has a certain advantage in speed, the look of a cartoon is slightly affected by not sitting at a slanted drawing table with pen on paper. The muscle movement is different and it shows. With that in mind, I generally my limit tablet drawing to small cartoons or icons.

One of the most useful features of a tablet is pressure sensitivity. The pressure preferences can be adjusted to control brush size, opacity, color and more, as you work, or any combination of these. It’s a very convenient and intuitive feature and one I use constantly.

If you’ve made up your mind and have your heart set on buying a tablet, you’ll need to decide which size will be right for you. Even if money is no object (and if it isn’t, more power to you), keep in mind that getting the biggest size available might not be the right choice. Unlike a monitor where bigger is better, a tablet is a hands-on device and it’s important to get one that fits you and your working space.

A large tablet will require larger arm movements for the cursor to travel from one side of the screen to the other, and the tablet itself will take up more premium real estate on your desktop. Personally, I’ve found that the mid-size 6″x8″ version is a good fit for me and my desk. Other artists prefer to work with the tablet in their lap instead of on their desk and a larger tablet is preferable to them.

Getting Started

I usually start with a sheet of heavy, 100 lb. bond paper, a #2 pencil and a block eraser, a pen holder and nibs, and a bottle of waterproof India ink. The nibs I use are varied and range from stiff crowquills for fine lines, to larger Hunts like the #512. So I don’t smear my pencil work and transfer oil to the paper, I use a brush for wiping away eraser dust. A handy roll of paper towels and or toilet paper is good for cleaning ink spills and wiping nibs when they clog.

A comfortable chair, a sturdy, adjustable drafting table, and good lighting are a must. One of the best investments I made when I started freelancing was a good drawing table. It’s heavy and infinitely adjustable in height and tilt. I’ve customized it by adding a rubber cutting surface to it, a full length front pencil tray and a side tray.

The first step in creating a cartoon is deciding what to draw. A large percentage of my cartoons come from suggestions and ideas that people have given me, or concepts clients require. When I am handed an open ended assignment giving me a bit of creative freedom, or just feel like creating a character for my own use, I try to think how to make it unique and fun. Not only fun to look at, but fun to draw. My goal is to find an unusual angle or pose that makes people look just a little bit longer.

Before starting a cartoon, I draw in my head as much as possible. Visualizing before I get to the drawing table makes getting started that much easier. If I’ve thought about the project for a while, set the composition in my head, and maybe even slept on it before picking up a pencil, I usually can’t wait to get started drawing. On occasion I will do a few thumbnail sketches on plain paper first, but somehow it seems most of my thumbnails end up as tight roughs.