Storyteller's Workshop, Inc.

I've shown this technique before, but decided it should be covered in more depth.

This was a job I did several months ago for Miller WhiteRunkle in Seattle. They wanted a woodcut-style illustration of several objects, one of which was a poncho.

I began with this line drawing of the poncho, done in simple brush. I used this drawing as a guide for the final woodcut drawing, so what I needed here was clarity. I kept the lines crisp, and sketched in the shaded areas using an approximation of the line work I'd use in the finished illustration, but not concerned with the line quality.

The next step was to scan in the guide image, and reverse it. The woodcut effect is basically a brush drawing in negative, where the brush strokes you put down in black end up being white, and the white becomes black. So I needed my guide drawing to be in the negative as well. I then turned the image into a very light cyan and white. This made the image visible to me but not so visible to the scanner. You'll also notice I added parallel horizontal lines to the image -- I wanted my hatch marks to be horizontal, and these lines would help me keep them straight.

Here's a picture of the "final" art in progress, with me inking in the blue parts of the image with my brush. You can see the horizontal hatch lines that will look very "woodcutty" when it's all done.

It's at this stage that the tone for the image is determined. A tighter inking job with shorter, thinner strokes can give you a more engraved look, while a looser stroke with a heavier line weight and rougher edges can make a woodcut or linoleum block kind of effect. If more of the latter look is wanted, then I will try NOT to be too perfect with it. The more of those tiny "mistakes" -- ink going thin, stray line edges, smudges -- the more your drawing will look like a woodcut.

It's very hard to think in the negative, even with this close guide to follow. The thicker your hatching, which makes your work look darker while you're doing it, the lighter it will be when all is done. It takes a goodly amount of concentration.

When the image is all inked in, it looks like this on the left side of the final picture: a negative of the final image. After I scan the image in, and create a negative of it, clean it up and add color, we get the final image seen on the right.

Labels: illustration, tutorial, woodcut