Hand Drawn Art & Web Design

I am by no means a fantastic artist. That's not to say that I don't have experience; I've sketched since I was 15, painted a few pictures,  drawn a gaggle of portraits, and painted a few hundred miniatures.  Heck, I even had a little comic strip I published online years ago. But I have no illusions, I am no Jim Lee or Jack Kirby.

I like to think that I've gotten better at it over the years. I certainly enjoy it more. The ideas in my head are much more willing to come out correctly onto the page. However I never really did much with my art in the digital medium. I tried scanning my drawings, attempted to work with them in Photoshop, but it just never really worked out all that well. I could only monkey around with levels and brightness and contrast so much before I wanted to throw my virtual paintbrush into the virtual trash bin.

I tried inking my artwork rather than penciling it, thinking that the harder lines would come across better when scanning. Problem is, an inker I am not. My lines came across as heavy handed and clumsy, sort of like if I was inking with a baggy that I dipped into a paint can. It seemed like it was a lost cause, and for years it was.

Then, two things happened that changed all of that.  First, my wife. I had given up on drawing for years, and then she gave me a fantastic drawing pad and a calligraphy pen to encourage me to draw again. I was a bit rusty, but it didn't take too long before I discovered that my hiatus had actually improved my drawing, and I attribute some of that to web design.

During my no-drawing period, I was working on design quite a bit. Using digital tools, I created objects that I tried to make as real as possible. I worked heavily with shapes, colors, light and shadow to make cart icons, banners and buttons. The one thing that had always frustrated me though, was I never felt 'free'. I couldn't just quickly sketch out an idea I had into the computer and there were times it drove me crazy.

Fortunately, event #2 occurred. My wife purchased me a gorgeous 11x6 Wacom tablet which you can read all about here. Long story short, I loved the thing, but it required quite a bit of time to get the hang of it. I think the Wacom tablet is similar to Photoshop in that you can use it for years, but you're never truly going to master it. There's always something new to learn and try. It's been several months since that last post, and I have definitely given it a workout (and vice-versa).

There are people out there, most notably web-cartoonists such as Scott Kurtz (www.pvponline.com), Mike Krahulik (www.penny-arcade.com) and Scott Johnson (www.myextralife.com)  who have honed their Wacom tablet skills to such a degree that they can completely skip the step of sketching on paper, they simply draw with their Wacom tablets.

That's pretty darn impressive in my opinion.

So where am I going with all of this? How has hand-drawn artwork influenced my designs? Well if you've read this far, you must really want to know.

Like I mentioned before, working in design I was exposed heavily to shapes, colors, shadow and light. But with sketching, I worked with creativity in a more raw form, I was free to explore silly ideas and radical thoughts very quickly. It wasn't long before both of these skillsets began to intermingle. I no longer felt bound by the 'square' mentality that most web designers (including yours truly) fall into. I tried more unusual layouts and ideas that I never would have done before- I didn't care about 'How will I turn this into HTML/CSS?' I just banked on the fact that I could figure it out. It pushed me in a way I hadn't been pushed before, and it was liberating.

I hope those reading this can come away with something from my little tale, and if not, well... sorry.

Keep an eye open for next month's article, I'll discuss how using a Wacom pen and some Javascript I disarmed a nuclear bomb I found in my garage.