Advice for drawing B/W or monochromatic comics?

[Airgita]

Hey guys, so I'm currently trying to figure out how to do a comic in black and white (or at least monochromatic). Does anyone have any advice or know any references or resources that I can study up on? I've mostly been looking at Jillian Tamaki's work on This One Summer and a little bit of CLAMP's xxxHolic.

I'm mostly having trouble with making the imagery more striking and just simplifying a scenery so the eye naturally is drawn to the focal point of the image. Here's an example of a panel that I've doodled with (it's a scene from The Deathly Hollows Pt. 2)

Thanks for your time and any help!

[genjiOtori]

Do you want to do a grayscale comic or just black and white?
If you can use different shades (from white over your chosen color to black) it's getting easier. You can use the shades to guide the reader's attention by using high and low contrast (e.g. low contrast for your background and high for your foreground/objects of interest). White space is the key for things you want to pop out. Work with your shades so they stand out.
I myself made the challenge to use only black and white... no in-betweens... Like a hardcore shonen-manga. It's really difficult if you have a scenery in a panel. You have to think a lot about contrast and textures. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance the details of back- and foreground. What I learned:

• Using less is often better
• Give room for the important things
• Be more brave when using black (zoom out to see the overall impression of a panel: is it balanced? what pops out? which direction will the reader look?)
• Use different kinds of hatching to implement different surfaces

[Airgita]

I'm thinking 3 colours: black, white, and blue. From the comics that I've looked up so far, they've either used the middle shade (in this case blue) to emphasise on something or to differentiate between the values (black for darkest, colour for next darkest, white for light, with no other shades in between).

I completely glossed over hatching for shading. I wasn't sure if that would detract from the image. In your experience, has hatching for shades added to the work or just make it seem too busy? I always find that extreme blacks and whites for shading looked much more intriguing. But thanks for reminding me.

Thanks for sharing what you learned, I definitely need to think more about the blacks and whites when thumbnailing and make sure there's room to breathe in a panel

[UrMom]

Hatching could detract from your work if you don't know how to do it. Hatching takes a lot of time and patience, it will take a while to do a page before you get the hang of it. Personally I would recommend going for it, you learn some good techniques and it does look really good once you get into it, but that may be a bias I have since I've done hatch comics. (really, it's about what you feel works best)

I can't suggest much, but I would say to take your time when first starting out, mainly to get a feel for what you're doing. It's easier to see hiccups with black and white/grayscale work than with colour, you can't hide it as well. If you do want to show detail in the background for some reason, try having it fade behind the character and foreground... like giving them a small white aura if that makes sense? That helps the stuff in front stand out.

[joannekwan]

I think strong clean lines is what's going to help the work the most, unless you're going to use 50 shades of grey, but as you've already said, just black, white, and blue.

Here's a page from a comic I did that was strict black and white, Erie Waters. I relied on the stark contrast between black and white to give everything definition.

Now here's a page from my on-going greyscale series, Heavy Horns. I use 4 shades of grey throughout in this one. I bring this one up because it's the only series that I use cross-hatching in (the horned guy's undercut). Basically you're using cross-hatching to create another tone or value of grey but with more texture. This can be very effective such as in the works of Junji Ito or Edward Gorey. I'm not gonna tell you to use it or not, but these are just examples of what can be accomplished.

[sorrelma]

i haven't worked on a bw or monochromatic comic but i've heard that they should be made at 600dpi if you're interested in printing

[Airgita]

@Bloomer Yeah I'm mostly nervous because I haven't done black and white comics in a while, and never seriously before. I know it's not going to look very pretty in the beginning but I'm so not looking forward to that haha. My instincts with colouring has always been to add more (more shading, more texture etc) so that's something that I'll need to unlearn for this project.

@joannekwan Thanks for your examples. I think the strict black and white fits with the aesthetic we're trying to go for so I'll definitely be studying Erie Waters up close. It's like one of those things though where theoretically I get what I'm supposed to do with black and white but I can't get a feel of it yet when I'm actually drawing it. The panel where he's stepping outside is beautiful so it's easy to see how well the simplicity works. But like, how do I do that? Hahaha I want to cry...

What challenges do you run into when you draw in black and white? Do you have trouble conveying depth with only 2 tones for example?

@sorrelma Oh I never heard that before but that makes sense because you want the printer to pick up the different shades of grey. Thank you. I'll keep that in mind!

[alaingrey]

The key to b/w work is that the lineart has to be much more active than in color work, because it'll do all the creation of space. Hatching can help out a long, but sometimes it's easy to get a similar effect by trying to draw out textures and working out visual interest by feeling out shapes in ink rather than working out values in 'methods' like 'horizontal hatching for ground, x's for walls' etc etc.

This One Summer doesn't use hatching to achieve depth and visual interest, but there's strong black and textural inkwork. There's also a lot of strong blacks to create depth. The grass on this page is a good example of what I mean by textural inking. There's also the strong black of the car interior which creates a nice contrast vs. the character, the magazine and the outdoors.

Also I think you can get an easy blue effect in PS by doing an all gray drawing and then doing a blue overlay so then you're not constantly trying to pick out the appropriate shade of blue. That should help a lot : D

[UrMom]

Lol yeah. This will be super generic as hell, but don't worry about messing up. We're contantly messing up on things, but even though the idea of ruining a picture is scary, it's part of learning. My black and white/crosshatch stuff used to suuuuuck, but after 13 years of grinding it's not too bad.

This isn't the first crosshatch attempt, but it is from 2005.

This is from the end of last year or so? The visuals are pretty cluttered, but it could be worse.
If it helps, you could always doodle some stuff out to practice grayscale/black and white on. That is what I do when I'm trying to learn how to use a certain tool or medium.

But still, in the end you should pick what you feel works best. Good luck, by the way!

[joannekwan]

Definitely the biggest challenge is depth and differentiating subjects and objects. But in both cases, varying line weight is your best friend. Use thicker lines for objects and subjects closer to the foreground, and thinner for those in the back. I also use a slightly finer line when doing detail work on the subjects, like their faces. Also use shadows to your advantage when differentiating objects and this will also help with conveying depth. Hope this helps! And feel free to ask more questions~

[Airgita]

Thank you everyone for the replies, sorry it took me a while to respond back... It's been a bit of a hectic week! I tried to redo the inking for the same image (the HP scene) after taking all your tips and advice into consideration (line weight, contrast, white auras, textures etc). While I don't think it's all that great yet, I think it's much much more interesting than the first try

@alaingrey thanks for pointing out the textural inking from This One Summer. I definitely want to experiment with that more because overall it really does look more organic and compelling. I mean, it's still little too advanced for me at this point haha but goals amirite? I really admire Tamaki's ability to layout space though. I think even if she used flatter textures in the page you posted, your eye would still travel the way she intends because of her use of negative space. The lighting in those 3 panels at the bottom? Ugh! Also, thanks for the overlay tip, I can't believe I didn't think to use that xD

@Bloomer Thanks for the reminder, I actually do struggle with getting started on things. Especially when it involves new techniques or skillsets because I get scared that it won't turn out how I want and it just ends up frustrating me. But ya know, can't improve if you're not failing! Do you have any tips for laying out scenes in BW? I think the pacing in the page you posted is nice, in your experience is it all too different when laying things our in BW or colour?

@joannekwan My god, line weight IS my best friend! I wasn't sure if I wanted to use uniform weight for simplicity or whatever but it really is a lot funner to ink with differing weight... Even if at this point I'm not utilising it as much as I can. I don't really have that many questions now but is it ok if I hit you up sometime if I have any more? You guys have given me so much to think about and try already so I'm just really keen on experimenting and figuring out what works personally.

[joannekwan]

For sure, you can hit me up any time!
And nice work on the revised page, looks a lot more visually interesting! You're on your way~

[Airgita]

Thanks! And if there's anything I can help you out with, please let me know. I'm hoping that by the 10th or so revision, I'll have a better sense of what the heck to do xD

[UrMom]

Sorry for the delayed response.
Exactly, the point isn't that you fail but whether you learned from it, not to make to make the same mistake more than once. I'm not sure I can add to what's already been said but others, also the process with traditional is very different from digital, from my experience. Be sure to know where your blacks and darkest shades are going to go, and where you want your focus to be. Things can get a little confusing if you have a scene with a lot of detail, so having a thumbnail showing the general area for the shading helps. I always center, or highlight (depending on if the scene is at night or in a dark area) the things I want people to pay attention to.
Colour versus black and white isn't too different for me as far as process, I start with the shadows/darkest areas first and make my way to the base and light source. Colour uses a lot more layers, which takes more time.

These tutorials might be up your alley. They're musings from a b&w comic artist called Loom. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Sorry if this wasn't much help. Good luck with your b&w/grayscale comic!

If you want to nerd it up a bit you could do some studying. WittA is a pretty bomb b&w comic artist in my opinion.

[smgorden]

I'm just getting started, but my comic Gone Musing is b/w. One of the tools I've found useful is the screentones brush presets to do shading. (You can find those here: https://gumroad.com/l/srxm)

I've only made 8 single-panel episodes, but I'm learning pretty quickly by using that format. If you browse through, you can see the style move foward pretty rapidly as I get my workflow figured out. (link here: https://tapastic.com/series/Gone-Musing)

I haven't really used any gray scale values apart from whatever anti-aliasing happens on my ink strokes. Sometimes I've used photoshop's outline layer style (using white) to separate a foreground element from a shaded background.

I haven't done it, but the monochromatic style seems like a fun, choice. Screen-tone brush could still be employed in that context for some shading if you don't want to do hatching or crosshatching to get your middle values. And then use the color to separate layers by distance, which is what I'm seeing in the blue-tone examples, shown above. Or in the example of the kid reading a magazine in the car, the white space is used to draw attention to the object of focus, and the blues are used in that panel to diminish the other elements. So there are options, depending on the needs of the panel.

In any case, seems like you're headed in a good direction. Looking forward to seeing where it take you!

[hushicho]

I like using screentone because it allows for distinguishing various elements easily and with a relatively quick workflow. But if you're doing pure black and white (or mostly), it's a good rule of thumb to make sure you can distinguish all the elements in a panel. Solid black should probably not be on solid black unless there's an outline separating them, and that should probably be minimized because it gets cluttered, as some previous posts have noted.

Pure black and white can be very effective, especially if you sparingly use a color as you've said you might, for greater contrast and accent. It's just very important to be sure to use that quintessential contrast as effectively as possible. View it at a variety of zoom levels too! That can help a huge amount with seeing if it's working in terms of layout.