Nicolas Rix

I always love finding blogs of my favorite artists sharing their creative process. Whether it’s on Flickr or on a Forum. It’s just nice to know they’re not so full of themselves that they are willing to give us the inside story of how they do their work.

Unfortunately I can’t share the images of my work in this post but I will do my best to tell the story of how I create my work.

1. Begin with the ending in mind.
First, I get the idea. It’s usually spurred on by a photo or maybe an artist. Even subject matter. I read something the other day from another artist, he said: “Always have an idea, a story that you want to capture before you put pencil to paper.”

This is what I try to do. The sketches that end up being full finished pieces are usually the ones with an idea or story behind them, no matter how small.
So that’s exactly what I do. Visualize what I want to see in my end product. Close my eyes and think and focus on the intension of the piece.

Sometimes this takes some research for reference to find out what something looks like exactly. But if you’re doing something that you know there is no reference for it, just let your mind go with the flow.

2. Thumbnails: 90% Planning 10% Execution.
I almost always do thumbnails. 9 out of 10 times I do this. Especially with an idea that is complex and will be time consuming.

I will do maybe 2 or 3 thumbnails of an idea. Usually to plan out composition. I try to apply the “Golden Ratio” where ever I can. With all my stuff there is usually a character or characters featured in the artwork. So I plan out where I want them. Review it over a few days. Then decide whether it’s worth completing. If I’ve done the process correctly up to this point then I go to step 3.

My tip for composition: Learn the Golden Ratio and know what colors work together. Symmetry is overrated.

3. Scanning and Correcting.
I scan in my thumbnail which is usually about a greeting card size. Blow it up in photoshop to print it out at A3 size. If there is anything that I want changed that will help me when drawing the finished version, I will change it in the drawing with my Wacom Tablet.

I can also quickly check if the colors I had in mind work or not. Contrast is very important when considering the how effective your Composition will end up being.

The image at A3 gets printed out as two A4’s. I stick them together and get out my custom light table to sketch out the proportions on a clean piece of A3 paper.

Tip: Remove what is not necessary. A great Zen practice.

4. Detail and Drawing.
This is definitely one of the fun parts of creating my artwork. Sometimes I add more objects or take away objects. I pretty much fill in all the detail I want to be featured in the final piece that will be colored up in Photoshop.

I use a 0.5 Tech Pencil for everything I pencil.

My tip for penciling: Make every line count, put intension behind every single line

5. Inking.
This is time consuming, but again very fun. I sometimes don’t use any ink, like in my “Fairytale Christmas” piece. But I decide at this point whether the line work needs ink or not. If the pencil lines are not good enough then I will ink.

I use fibre tip ink markers of various sizes. But I generally try to keep all my line widths/weights the same. This is part of how I see anime drawn, so this is what I emulate. It’s appealing and neat to my eyes.

My best tip for inking would be: Don’t press down hard. Glide.

6. Scanning Again.
Yes. Again scanning. I have to scan in two parts as I have an A4 scanner. This is tricky to keep each side of the page inline with eachother. Once in photoshop I try my best to line up the two parts of the page and finally I’m left with an A3 image.

I lift up the levels of the image to darken the inked lines and to lower the grey scale. I’m then left with cleaning up an ink smudges or finger prints that might have not been rubbed out when I finished inking.

My tip for scanning big pages on an A4 scanner: Use masking tape.

7. The Coloring In.
I love coloring. I use a A5 Wacom Tablet to color my linework in photoshop.
I set my brush to a solid line with pressure sensitivity on. So my lines go from thick to thin depending on how hard I press down.

Not much to say here, except that I try to keep things simple. I use two tone coloring first and if I really feel like doing more I’ll add a third tone. Thats on the shadowing side. I then concentrate on any back light or highlighting tones, if needed. It usually helps depending on the scene.

Again my coloring style emulates anime coloring. What I do sometimes is if theres a character I want to stand out more than others is to use gradients over various areas. It’s subtle but effective and not overwelming.

In “Spirits & Demons” I went with a simple color tone bing pink of all colors. I’ve never done an Illustration that used a lot of pink. The reason I did this was to create a feeling of emptiness, slow motion down. It was an image with lots of things going on so I wanted to contrast that with simple use of color by making the image predominantly pink tones. The image also has a white background which is ultimate contrast. Again if I added a background of lets say, Clouds. It would just make the image far too busy. But if I made those clouds lower in coloration than the subject matter that would probably been okay.

My tip for coloring: Choose your colors carefully.

I do one more thing in all my images. Once everything is flattened into one Layer. I saturate the colors. Then I use Color Balance to add more Red or Blue to the image. It gives it a more unified tone. It’s all about tones.

Hope you enjoyed this and that it helps you in some way.