Becky Hawkins

Joining the 21st Century

Added 2023-11-06 19:19:41 +0000 UTC

This is the first political cartoon I did entirely in Clip Studio Paint! It went up on Barry's Patreon a couple of months ago, but this post has been sitting half-finished in my Drafts. Coloring digitally is a lot faster and easier in Clip Studio Paint than in Photoshop. There are lots of neat drawing tools, too. I hope this will cut a bunch of production time off my political cartoons with Barry without really changing the look.

I mentioned I was taking a class on Clip Studio Paint over the summer. All the cartoonists I know have been moving from Photoshop to CSP over the past decade, and when friendly local cartoonist/teacher Jonathan Hill announced an online course, I decided it was time. I am not an “open it up and play with it” kind of gal when it comes to software. I will pay someone to keep me calm and slowly tell me which buttons do what!

This was the first drawing I colored in CSP.

It was a birthday doodle based on a clip of Lisa Ann Walter on a food tour of Philadelphia. I still feel more confident drawing in a sketchbook, so the fastest (and, I think, best-looking) option was to draw it in pencil, go over it with pen and ink wash, scan it, and color it digitally.

While I’m being a fangirl, time to brag that Naomi took me to see Lisa Ann Walter perform when she came to Portland!

We got the spiffy tickets where you can go up and say hi afterwards 🤩

CSP also has tools to lay out a booklet, so I printed a collection of Abbott Elementary sketches and gave it to her after the show 😄 Another thing I would not have had time to do without cooperative software (and Naomi’s tech support tbh).

Here are some of my favorite sketches: