Comic making: Turn your rough sketches into line art

This simple tutorial shows how to create the image by the left from a rough sketch(below). This technique can be very helpful in making comics and can also be used for turning pictures to lineart.

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We’ll be using an image of a car sketched by my friend, Williams. You can use any image you want to. Be creative!

1. Open the image in the photoshop & unlock it by double-clicking the layer & rename the layer “original”

2. Create a new layer below it using Ctrl+Shift+N, and rename the layer “bg”. Fill the layer with white using Ctrl+Del (i’m assuming your foreground & background colors are set to black & white respectively).

3. Create another layer using Ctrl+Shift+N, and rename the layer “lineart”, because this is where we’ll be drawing on.

4.  Now, we adjust the brightness of the “original” layer, set the blend mode to “multiply” and lock it.

 

5. Pick the brush tool (B), select the “paintbrush Oval 45px”. Make sure the mode is set to “normal”, while flow & opacity should be set to “100%”.

6. Then, navigate to the “Brushes pallette” and change the settings as follows:

When you’re done, create a preset so you won’t have to go through this settings over again.

Now we’re ready to trace.

7. Make sure the “lineart” layer is selected, then select the pen tool. Make sure it’s set to “path” and NOT ”shape” layers.

 

Create the work path, right click >> stroke path, and select “brush” >> “OK”, then press the “Enter” key to remove the path.

Note: At any point, you can adjust the brush settings when you need to make it thicker or thinner, then pick the pen tool to continue tracing.

 

For the wheels, use the ellipse tool (U), right click & fill with black. Create a second ellipse, right click >> make selection and delete. Then, delete spill-outs with the eraser tool.

Tip: To move the ellipse, press ctrl+T then move.

At any point, you can preview your work by turning off the visibility of the “original” layer.

 

This is what my final image looks like:

 

 

 

Good luck. I’ll post the second part(coloring) of this tut soon.