How to Clean and Tone a Paper Drawing in Gimp (no tablet required)

I thought I’d share how I make my little comic doodles using a rough sketch and gimp - no tablet required!  I enjoy making these because they’re quick to do and don’t require any of my fancy drawing tools, meaning I can make these at work to pass the time (I keep card stock on my desk to use instead of an actual sketchbook).  Typically, it will take me under two hours to make one of these from start to finish, depending on how complex the drawing is.  To follow along, you’ll need: 

• paper (a thicker sketchbook paper, or card stock)
•  pencil (you can use your fancy drawing pencils, or a simple every day pencil)
• Ultra Fine Point Sharpie Marker (the kind you can pick up in any office store)
• Scanner (and the basic knowledge to use it)
• Gimp (and the basic knowledge to use it)

Step 1: Making the Doodle

To get started, draw your doodle on the heavy paper with the pencil.  Easy, right? (sorry, this isn’t a drawing tutorial, it’s a “make this picture look good and put it in a digital form” tutorial).

Don’t worry about getting your doodle perfect – I usually leave a lot of my sketch lines.  We’ll erase these later so it’s okay.  I also don’t put in the finer details until after the main inking is done.

Comments

[noahms456]

If you use a blue pencil for the sketch, you could skip the "erasing" step after you have inked it. Once scanned, you can use the Gimp to threshold level remove the blue sketch and leave only the inked artwork. Saves on erasers, too! Nice tutorial!

[CreativeToto]

Oh I never thought of that! I'll have to give that a try, that would be much much easier :D

[kaylaangelkisses]

1.
Can you please make a 'ible on how to use gimp? I just got it and I have no idea how to use it.
2.
can you use pixlr?(yes I spelled it right)
3.
some of your people dont have mouths.....

[mrsthursday]

OOh I think I may try this - don't have scanner, it blew up, long story- could I use a digi camera? Probably, right?

[marcopolo1613]

if you use a digital camera, find a neutral gray color, and set that as the transparent in gimp. then overlay what is now mostly the black lines onto a white background. at this point brightness and contrast should clean up most of what's left. works great for to get strong contrasts with scanners too.

[mrsthursday]

thanks I'll give it a go

[CreativeToto]

I'm sure you could, if you took a very clear picture without any shadows :) Good luck!

[pfred2]

The traditional mechanical way of doing this is using an object called a Scummex bag, or scum bag for short. It is a porous little cloth bag filled with bits of rubber eraser granules. First you knead the bag over your work to get some eraser sand all over it, that way you don't get lead on it to begin with, then you scrub your picture with the bag, to remove lead "haze" if any develops. I searched the term but Google is blissfully ignorant of all of this, so I took a picture of one of my scum bags I keep around to do my dirty work for me, just so you don't think I am kidding about any of this.

[kenkaniff]

Wow that sounds relatively simple why didn't I think of that sooner!!

Awesome 'ible, very idiot-proof. 5*