Stuff I Do

Pen Pressure Problem – Solved

MaTo — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:57:39 +0000

When trying out Inkscape and trying to customize a brush to my preferences I noticed that Inkscape didn’t react to pen pressure. I use an old Graphire 4 which isn’t really a tool for professionals and probably not even for happy amateurs like me. But I have it and I’m used to it.

I started fiddling late in the evening with the drivers causing havoc and after some frustration next day managed to restore functionality to what it was before: working perfectly in Photoshop but no pressure in Inkscape. I installed the latest drivers from Wacom and after a couple of unfruitful attempts learned a few things:

remove tablet first
then uninstall old driver using the Control Panel
reboot
download and install new driver from Wacom site
plug in tablet

To set the pen pressure in Inkscape you simply push the button with the downpointing arrow and it will apply to the calligraphy tool if that is selected.

If that doesn’t work you will have to check if the “Input device” settings are correct. Choose Input devices under File menu.

The pen should be checked and set to “screen”. The checkbox below should also be checked.

First time around I did all this and could not get Inkscape to respond to pen pressure. When I looked at the hardware tab and tried the pen in the test area I could only make one “lamp” lit up.

Thanks to a wonderful person, I was made aware that I hadn’t installed the latest version of Inkscape. I was running 0.48.2 – at this moment said to be the latest stable version and I thought it was a good idea to have a stable version… After upgrading to 0.48.3.1 r9886 pen pressure worked in test area and after rebooting twice also on canvas

The third axis is pen pressure.

And here is the first doodle with pen pressure finally working like it should

Using Inkscape

MaTo — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:49:38 +0000

I was planning to use a vector based editor in my comics making process and downloaded Inkscape. It was quite a while ago and I never got to using it. The reason was I couldn’t make it work with my Wacom tablet. The cursor moved but I couldn’t draw a line. I’ve had some experience with Illustrator and never really felt comfortable with it and it is far too expensive for a hobby that generates no income. So I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t use Inkscape because the interface looked promising.

Today I downloaded and installed version 0.48.2 without any hopes..but it works!!

Generally I think the interface gives a good overview but personally I would have prefered less colorful icons. One thing that I really like with Inkscape is the scroll bar with colorswatches and it’s easy to set a default font, Digital Strip being the one I use both for Guillaume’s Rambling Ride and Exodus from Masr.

As a quick test I took a drawing and imported it into a layer. On a second layer I started to try out the tools. My favourite is the “calligraphic or brush” tool set to “brush” which I’ve used on the arms.

I think I might get that page done for Guillaume’s Rambling Ride someday…

Make Comics Not War

MaTo — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:42:20 +0000

It must be so much more fun. Here’s my propaganda cards.

Robot Sketched in Silly Shirt

MaTo — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:13:39 +0000

Fooled around with a digital sketch. I originally wanted an olive green metal surface that is rusty in places. I’ve used scanned watercolor stains to create the surface.

A Dress for a Arachnean Female

MaTo — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:52:32 +0000

Did some sketches of outfits that I would like to wear but do not dare. I like the way this one turned out. It’s done with coloured pencils in my sketch book. She could be a comics character; killing villains in secret by sending them black boxes with poison gas or spiders or something. The dress is far too nice to be given to a bad character….

Robots

MaTo — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:56:46 +0000

I need to improve my robots…

Sketching with colored pencils is better in two ways; I can’t use an eraser; it’s less dirty. I start with a light color and a pencil that’s a little hard and finish with darker softer pencils; Bruynzeel, old and the newer -sakura.

After this, I still need to improve my robots…..

Striped Dress Sketch

MaTo — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:04:22 +0000

This started out as a sketch in the recycled series but the dress does not look as if it’s made of old rags at all. So I played around with the background making it into a foreground instead. It’s drawn with pencils and promarker for the skin and some colors of the dress.

La Mamma Collage

MaTo — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:59:29 +0000

Collage is fun. Is see this motive as an alternative madonna with two girls. What’s the fuss with having one boy about anyway?

It started out as a paper collage where I added a cut out drawn arm. Then I added letters and frame digitally.

It’s such A perfect day

MaTo — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:35:20 +0000

I’m glad that I spend it doing this… I like type. I like fashion. Why not combine that into an A dress or maybe a pregnant B? So I sketched this up digitally.

Inspiring Inking

MaTo — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 21:19:09 +0000

Here’s some images that I find inspirational when I’m about to ink.

Bill Sienkiewicz has a black & white gallery. Here’s his “Vampire”. I love the energy in the strokes.

Another of my absolute favourites is Neville Colvin. On www.comicartfans.com one can look at high resolution scans of several of Colvins panels.

Here’s the link to this particular strip: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=699726&GSub=106509

I especially enjoy the line of Modesty’s nose, the thick lines in her hair as if made with a flat brush and the rythm created by thin parallell lines and flowing thick strokes.

All things are supposed to come in three but not tonight…