As a comic artist, I’m always looking for ways to connect with my audience and also to find ways to earn money to offset my expenses etc. Recently I decided to create a series of artist sketch cards to have available for sale at conventions. In this article, I’ll try to give you some insights into how I’ve gone about the process.
The first decision I had to make was the format for my cards. There are a lot of people who make sketch cards on a small format roughly 2.5″x3.5″. You can even buy these standard sized cards with a light blue frame outline and the words “sketch card” printed on them. But, I wanted to work in a larger size closer to the normal panel size of my comic. That meant that I needed a card that was approximately 6″x6″. I also wanted the cards to work well with ink and/or colored markers. My preferred surface is vellum Bristol board. As it turns out Strathmore makes a nice 300 series of vellum Bristol board in a 6″x6″ pad. Depending on where you buy them, they cost between $1.40 and $3.00 for a 20 sheet pad.
As you can see in the photo above, I’ve taken the plain 6″x6″ sheet of Bristol board and customized it with an outline panel frame with the titles “BugPudding” and “Artist Sketchcard” and my copyright signature. In order to do this I take the sheets out of the pad and run them through my computer printer. I made the template for the cards in Adobe Illustrator set up on a canvas that is 6″x8″. Then I save that off as a PDF document and use that to print on the Bristol board. The reason I layed the template out on 6″x8″ instead of the actual 6″x6″ size is because the standard paper size my printer expects is 6″x8″. Even though I’m actually printing on a sheet that’s 6″x6″.
Having decided on the size and format of the blank sketch cards, I’m ready to start making cards. I wanted to have two types of cards. One type is for pen and ink drawings and the other type is pen and ink that is then colored with markers. The plain pen and ink cards are faster to make and therefore I can afford to price them for less then the colored cards. Basically it takes about twice as long to do the additional marker coloring. In either case the first step is to do a loose blue pencil sketch over which I render the pen and ink drawing.
In general I erase any blue pencil lines that show after the ink has dried. I could leave them, but it’s an old habit.
Above is a photo of the basic tools that I use to make the sketch cards. Starting with the Bristol board, I use waterproof ink both black and assorted colors. My normal style in the comic is to ink in assorted colors so for some of my sketch cards I reproduce that look. For others I just use black India ink. I use my trusty lead holder with 2mm blue lead and a lead pointer. For the actual inking I use dip pens as well as Winsor Newton series 7 sable brushes. I also have a jar of “Pro-White” for making corrections and of course my handy Sakura cordless electric eraser.
I prefer to use Copic sketch markers for my coloring. The aren’t as flexible as using a brush and watercolors, but much faster and easier. Let’s face it, time is money.
Above is an example of an inked and colored sketch card. They aren’t as nice as if I were digitally coloring in Photoshop but these are “old school” hand drawn and colored sketch cards not digital prints.
Above is an assortment of my sketch cards. I want people to be able to handle them at the conventions when they pick out their favorites therefore I needed to protect the art by putting the cards in a self sealing clear plastic bag.
I buy these self sealing clear plastic bags sized 6-7/16″ x 6-1/4″ from a company called Clear Bags. A hundred bags cost $6. The seal is great and it allows the bag to be easily opened and resealed if I need to add an additional autograph ect.
I also take blank sketch cards to the conventions for the occasional on the spot special request, but I really am too busy to do much of that during a normal convention so I try to make up a big stock of cards in advance. I’d much rather be talking to people and showing them the comic and save my drawing work for in the studio. I hope you got some good ideas from this article. If you have any questions, or other thoughts, just leave a comment.
