My art process on Manga Studio 4Ex

I use Manga studio 4Ex for all my digital artwork, and that means sketching, inking and coloring.
I'm going to show you how I drew the Valentines girl from my one of my previous posts, Happy Valentines.

so how do you do it? how do you go from just a image in your brain to a full fledged inked and colored drawing on the computer?
maybe those questions can't be fully answered in one post, but for now you can get a feel for how I do things.







First, I only roughly sketch out my Idea, In this case, a Manga school girl for a Valentines picture. I use the pre-made blue layer, and tell my OCD to get lost while I get messy with the pencil and marker tools. at this stage I am not always sure of clothes or hairstyle, right now I'm just trying to get my idea on the paper. After using the blue layer I'll draw over it with a B&W layer.

 

 after I've scribbled enough,  I delete my blue layer, and then convert my B&W into blue. now a lot of the messy stuff is gone now, but it's not ready to be colored just yet. 

I create a second layer, usually a vector layer( Vector layers allow you too adjust you lines after they're drawn). Of course, this is all with using Manga studios so your art program might be different, though any decent Art program should have some sort of Vector brush or layer.

Now I trace the previous lines, making adjustments as I go, tweaking her hair and giving her a sweater vest and a collared shirt.

after I finish Inking, I make the underlying layer invisible so I can see what I need to fix in my inking layer, if it can hold out for itself.






after this, the only last step is too color your line art. Coloring is a HUGE step, so I can't cover it here. I'm currently trying to work out a way to video myself as I draw, so don't worry, you'll get that coloring with Manga studios tutorial you deserve!

and then you have your finished project:

as I said, I do all my digital artwork using Manga Studios; you can find the program( I use 4Ex) Here at amazon, or here at their website, Mangastudio.com.
MangaStudios is made and produced by Smith Micro.