It's been a very long time since I tried my hand at graffiti lettering but after recently coming across @trippymane's competitions while browsing through my Hive feed, I felt an urge to get the pencil and paper out and get to sketching. For this particular project however, I wanted to try something new (for me anyway) - a hybrid sketch. I will go through the process now:
First of all we start out with a good old sketch. This says GHOSTON in case you didn't catch that yet. Ghoston just happens to be the fictional city where I set the majority of my stories.
Next up I added a bit of 3D to give the letters more depth.
I wanted to add a nice outline to the letters but wasn't too happy with the end result. The pen was too thick and as a result the letters lost a lot of the sharpness and definition.
I rubbed out the pencil to see if it looked any better:
So the next step in my hybrid project was to take the sketch and bring it into the digital realm. I decided to go back a few steps and use the last pencil version, in order to maintain the definiton on the outlines. You might be surprised who we meet next. Yes, that's right, our good old friend MS Paint!
So by now I was armed with a messy sketch, an ancient program with limited features and a mouse. At this point I thought the picture was going nowhere, so I experimented with some strange shapes and colours.
The final image:
What did I learn?
This was fun and I enjoyed the sketching part. I'm rusty as it's been a long time since I practised lettering, but I'm looking forward to trying out new styles.
Drawing with a mouse is a nightmare. One thing is for sure, I need to use a different program for hybrid pictures, preferably something free that works with layers (your suggestions are welcome!). I was thinking of Inkscape.
I also need to find a finer outlining pen and see if I can find some good colouring pencils and markers.
If digital drawings keep me entertained then I might just consider asking Santa for a drawing tablet.
That's it for this piece, on to the next one soon.
Over and out.