Xara Designer for artist that draws by hand

**amitairos** · 31 May 2011, 05:15 AM

Originally Posted by handrawn

so what does he use the tablet with at the moment?

I'm sorry, I meant I can give him mine to use and he'll try it. He doesn't use it currently since he's skeptical of using it.

Originally Posted by Albacore

If he looks at any of the work done by Bob Hann or Zeb he will notice that all bring in scanned pencil or pen drawing and trace the scanned drawing using a mixture of Shape Editor and Pencil. I know that I can work faster using this method rather than starting with a blank frame or trying to trace directly from a tablet from a sketch on the tablet. These methods or working are very personal and it is all dependant on what the person finds what suits them tell him to try all and not only once.

I think I should really just let him try out what suits his needs.
I was just wondering with what tool he should start with? The freehand which is close to drawing? Or the Shape Editor tool?
Thanks

**handrawn** · 31 May 2011, 08:40 AM

watch the videos
scan up some pencil drawings and practice rendering the line
it doesn't matter which tool you start with - no-one else can second guess what another person will prefer [unless they have seen them at work, and even then...]
the really important thing is to try them all

[and as many different programs as you can too - at the very least try a raster program such as painter/photoshop/painttoolSAI, especially as an alternative for colouring as its a different technique, and the brushes in SAI for example have quite a different feel to those in Designer]

**amitairos** · 01 June 2011, 01:03 PM

Hi.
So the artist drew an illustration in pencil, and we scanned it. I helped him get started- but he did most of the work. He went over the lines with the Freehand tool, then we used Bob Hahn's method of coloring- Converting lines to shape, adding, and then breaking. It worked pretty well.
He also added shading with feathering.
Here is the result.
What do you think?