This is a quick and easy technique

[Twaager]

After using and testing me through all sorts of materials and methods to illustrate my Childrens Picture Book stories, I opted for this, the simplest possible method I can imagine. This is how I do it in Corel Painter 12. The same method could have been used in ArtRage too but the tools I like the most are in Painter. That is why I use it instead of AR.

This is how I go along:

1. First I sketch with a pencil on paper, I can’t sketch digitally, I always use pencil and cheap paper.
2. I scan and scale and edit the sketch in Photoshop.
3. After the Photoshop editing I print the sketch on ordinary thin printing paper.
4. The sketch is taped down on the light table and copied with an 0.7 or 1.3 graphite pencil. I use a Canson 200 g drawing paper size 24 x 32 cm with rough grain for a lively appearanceof the strokes and dashes. This copy becomes the original drawing, a simple graphite drawing that can easily be altered later on, if needed.
5. I scan the original to Corel Painter at original size (24 x 32 cm) 300 dpi and paint it . The original drawing is on a “multiply” layer on top of the drawing layer. I use only one single tool for painting: Painter Oil Pastel, but a variant that I gave a little "jitter" to make it look more natural.
6. A subtle "overlay" texture of an old paper finalizes the illustration.

This is a quick and easy technique with good and live looking results.

How do you make your illustrations?

[Twaager]

The original drawing is 24 x 32 cm and that is a bit larger than my scanner wich is A4 size. So I scan parts of the drawing and stitch them together in Photoshop. It got an automated stitching function as well as Windows Live Photo (free) or Microsoft ICE (free). All works quick and the same.

After importing the stitched scan I added some colour and some texture. That is all there is to it. Simple and quick.

[kenmo]

Very cool...

[Judith Tramayne]

I'm making my Children's eBook entirely in ArtRage because I like the painterly look I'm getting and the sticker spray for fur, makes my animals come alive.

My procedure which I'm testing right now to see if the pixel sizes are correct for a one page fixed layout ePub for the iPad:

Size: 2048 X 1536 high (this is what's recommended for the new retina display in the new iPad)

1. I draw (paint) everything in ArtRage using layers for my characters.
2. After each body part of my character is on a different layer, I add a group for different parts of the body (i.e, eye, head, body, etc).
3. I then save as a ptg file and as a png.
4. By having the body parts on layers, I can rotate arms, etc. And if I need to redraw the position of an arm, I simply hide the different arm layers and save the new one as a different named character png.
5. Once my characters are done, I create the background for each page.
6. Then I import the character png into the background painting, resize (transform) and place it where it needs to be. (By having my character separate, I don't need to redraw just make adjustments as needed).
7. After I have my image (background and characters set) for an individual page, I export as a png.

From there I make by ePub by hand (meaning I code it) so the image (using a minus z-index code) is behind the text I add.

[Dreagthe]

I use a very similar technique to Twaager, except that I only draw and scan once, then I clean it up, scale, transform, skew (!), etc in painter 12. I then color using a combination of painter watercolor and scanned actual watercolor layers which are manipulated as required. That lends tremendous realism.

You can see how they look at dreagthe.deviantart.com.

But there are an awful lot of crashes, especially in painters selection tools and if you make a brush too big. That said, I am using gigantic sized files.

So having bought Artrage yesterday I'm trying out the same techniques, which seem to work well. I've worked out that tint layers in artrage are like gel layers in painter.

I'm missing that you can't save selections--but you can store them on layers. I also had Artrage crash miserably when loading my layers--so I've learned you can't get too big. I'll try cutting back to 300dpi from 600.