[For Beginner/Smartphone] The First Step! Let’s Do Rough Drawing.

When drawing an illustration, the first thing you want to do is to draw a rough draft.

When I say “draw a rough draft”,
“It’s too much trouble to draw a rough draft and then make a clean copy.”
“Is it necessary to draw a rough draft?”
“Is it necessary?”
That’s what you might think.

It’s true that drafting takes time, and it can be frustrating to not be able to draw the parts of the face you want to draw.

But if you draft, you will be able to draw the illustration more exactly as you want.

In this article, I would like to introduce such “drafts”, “why they make illustrations better”, and “how to draw basic drafts”.

1. Why does drawing a rough draft improve your illustration?

The advantage of drawing a rough draft is that you can adjust the balance of the composition, body, etc. well in advance.

Whether the lines are clean or dirty greatly affects the impression of the illustration.
For this reason, you want to concentrate on drawing clean lines in the clean draft.
However, if you do not draw a rough draft and just start drawing, you will not be able to

・Draw clean lines
・Adjust the composition.
・Adjusting the balance of the face and body

You have to do all three at the same time.
It is difficult to do these three things at the same time unless you are very familiar with drawing, and on the contrary, it takes a lot of time.

Drafting is the process of doing the two tasks of “adjusting the composition” and “adjusting the balance of the face and body” before the final drawing.
If you complete these two tasks first, you can concentrate on drawing clean lines in the clean writing stage.

 

2. Let’s draw a rough draft! [How to draw a basic draft]

Now, let’s actually draw a rough draft.

[1] Prepare a new canvas.

Prepare a canvas in any size you like.

[2] Create a layer for drafting.

Once the canvas is ready, create a layer for drafting.

＜Q. What is a layer? ＞

A. It is like a transparent film.
By layering these layers, you can finish the illustration.
You can make them invisible later, so please feel free to draw your drafts without worry.

[3] Draw a rough draft.

Draw a rough draft on the draft layer you just created.
The way to draw a rough draft differs from person to person, but this time I would like to draw the basic drafting procedure “Atari, Rough, Draft”.

[1] Draw the Atari.

Draw a bite on the drafting layer you just created.
You can use any color you like.
Here, we will use a bright blue color to make it easier to see the rough sketch we will draw later.

＜What is Atari? ＞

It is a procedure to decide where to place an object on the screen and to position it.
By drawing simple shapes, you can decide where to place a character in a pose, where to place an object in the background, and so on.

This is also the process of deciding not only how to place the objects in the space, but also the balance of the body and face to some extent.
This process is often referred to as “drawing the body” as part of the procedure for drawing illustrations.

[2] Drawing a rough sketch.

Once you have drawn a rough sketch, follow the same procedure as before to create a new drafting layer and draw a rough sketch.

Choose a different color for the pen so that it is easy to see.
If you lower the opacity of the Atari layer, the rough lines will be more visible.

＜What is rough? ＞

This is the step where you decide on the details of the outfit, such as the hairstyle and expression, and turn the bite into an illustration.
At this stage, there is still a high possibility that changes will be made, so we will draw it simply.

You can draw as many rough images as you like.
You can draw as many rough sketches as you like, and gradually decide on the details as you go along, as if you are going from seeing the image dimly to seeing it clearly.

[3] Draw a rough draft.

Once the rough sketch is done, you can create another layer for the rough sketch.

If you make the Atari layer invisible and lower the opacity of the rough layer first, you can see the lines of the rough draft clearly and draw it easily.

＜What is a draft? ＞

Drafting is the process of preparing a rough, simple line drawing until it is close to a clean drawing.
If you focus on the lines you want to draw here, it will be much easier to make a clean draft.

Once the rough draft is drawn, lower the opacity of the draft layer as before, and start drawing.

Then color it and the illustration is complete.

 

3. Summary

In this article, we have introduced how to draw a rough draft.
It may be a little tedious, but by drawing a good rough draft, you can prevent yourself from having to redraw it many times after you have made a clean copy.

＜Draft assistance function＞

In addition, Mediban Paint has an original drafting layer function that makes drafting smoother, so please use this function as well.

・It is not affected by automatic selection or bucket tool range selection. (You can bucket paint ignoring the lines in the drafting layer.
・The drafting layer will be hidden automatically when exporting.

If you are just starting to draw illustrations, or if you feel that your illustrations are not going well, please try to draw a good draft.

(Text and pictures by sakaki)