March 12, 2013
Method to The Madness (part 3)
The inking stage of our Heavy Heart design complete, we can now move on to preparing it for print.
After looking again at the completed piece, I noticed a few areas where design elements needed to be amended. The stone platform at the bottom of the page, beneath the fruit, left a very flat line which leapt out of the composition. To soften its appearance, I whited out some areas with Tipex and added some unfurling leaves. As well as breaking up the bottom of the drawing, they now also lead the eye to the peaches at the dog’s feet on either side.
Once the artwork has been finalised, it is then scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop. At this stage all traces of the under drawing are removed, the contrast is adjusted to create a truly black and white image, and any title and printing information is added. This stage is more difficult if the original blue drawing is very heavy. Any erasing of the original drawing can lift the ink from the artwork, so for this reason we avoid it, preferring to clean the image digitally.The final cleaned artwork is now sent to the printer, who will use it to output films and prepare screens.