Monk and his I.T. Junk

Something I am finding quite tricky when drawing a Monk Cartoon is getting a good solid line. For example, cartoons by Ted Goff have such great solid lines and the black fill is always consistent. Obviously these are techniques gained over years of practice and study but I’m always on the lookout for better ways of doing things.

Presently, I sketch a cartoon using a good HB pencil, constantly rubbing out and redrawing until it looks ok. Then I trace the lines with a good 0.4 or sometimes 0.7 ink pen (the roller kind). Once I’m happy the pencil is fully erased and the image scanned in at 300dpi to a PDF which then gets tidied up in Photoshop (sometimes Paint Shop Pro) (where they grey fills are also added) before getting reduced to the appropriate size and pasted into the comic ‘window’.

The problems I often encounter are that the lines on the pen once scanned in and enlarged aren’t always as solid as they looked on the drawn page. Touching up in Photoshop also often gives a slight difference in saturation as it’s very hard to match the black.

I have recently changed the paper I draw upon to a glossier style paper to see whether it affects the overall image but I’m on the lookout for tips!