Mikael Lugnegard Traditional Sketch rendering

Now it's time to bring the sketch into Photoshop ( I use CS 2). I use a very budget CanonScan Lide 30, and it works very good (slow though). Since the scanner is in A4 format, I need to scan the image in two parts and assemble them in CS.

The first thing I do when that's done is to adjust the Levels (Ctrl+L) to get a nice, bright and white background. Then I tune up the darker levels to get some contrast.

Car designers usually sketch the wheels way to big, just to give the car the right presence. Big rims and wheels just look good, it may be a harsh and bumpy road, but that's the price to pay for beauty ;)) My wheels are too small, so I copy the wheel area, and enlarge them using the Free transform tool.

The grille, that gorgeous dubble kidney grille, looks really poor on my sketch, I know. So I did a new one, no big deal. Had to make it look better and cleaner. I also improved the headlight with some more contrast and details.

The sketch could be done now, but I will play a little bit with it since we got the opportunity.

First I put some colour into the digital airbrush and give the car a light wash in certain regions ( I will use a medium grey). I use a 12x18 inch Wacom Intous 2 tablet when sketching/painting in CS. I would really recommend anyone who's serious about learning this profession to invest in a Wacom tablet. If you have any plans to do some digital sketching, you can't live without this tool.
Anyway, be careful to preserve the contrast and forms. First create a new layer and set it's blend mode to multiply. I focus on the front corner of the bimmer, letting the shades fade away from the viewer. Try to use a large brush, it makes it easier to “hide” the strokes and create big shades. I've set the opacity jitter to “pen pressure” so I can control the opacity by adding or reducing pen pressure. When I'm satisfied with shading I erase the leftovers to make it match the sketch. You may also want to reduce the layer opacity, depending on which grey value you used.

But now this looks so digital, and I don't want this piece to be yet another “photoshop-sketch”. To get away from this digital look I add a new layer which I fill with a mid-grey tone, 50-75% grey. On this I run a noise filter, like 10-17 %, uniform and monochromatic. Finally I put this layer in Overlay mode, and set it's opacity to 20-30%. Now you'll have a slightly noise texture everywhere except on the white areas. Personally I think this removes the very digital feel to a sketch.

I'm pretty happy with the result now….no, wait a minute, we have forgotten some very important details, the parting lines or shutlines if you will. Sorry girls & guys! Bare with me as we add this final touch to our little sketch!
There's so many ways to do this. You can build different paths for each shutline and stroke em or you can handstroke them with tiny brush. Usually I would jump into painter and do this by hand, but since we've almost finished we'll stay in CS. So, using the pen tool, I create curves for the lines I wish to stroke. Try the get the curvature as good as possible, otherwise the lines will look like bad handstrokes that doesn't match the design. I strokes all path with a 3 big pixel hard brush, and create some nice fades by using a big soft eraser on the lines.

Well that's it. This is how I do an old school rendering with Verithin and prismacolor pencils, combined with some touch up in Adobe Photoshop CS 2. I hope you have picked up a few tricks and learned something. If you have any questions or comments, you're very welcome to contact me by phone or mail! You will find my contact details at,

www.daylightproduction.se

If this turns out nice, and we get some good response on this one, it's very likely that I'll do another old school tutorial, this time with markers and such!

Take care and happy sketching!