HOW TO PAINT A
GIRL AND HER TANK
Cartoonist Brett Parson presents his take on the iconic Tank Girl,
using the drawing tools of SketchBook Pro and colouring in Photoshop
S
o I must have been 11 or 12
years old when I discovered
Tank Girl. A comic book
museum that I would go to,
often several times a month,
was having an exhibit of all the artwork
from the original series. This was my first
introduction to Tank Girl, to the art of
Jamie Hewlett (now famous for creating
the cartoon band Gorillaz), and to the
bizarre slapstick writing of Alan Martin...
It would change my young brain forever.It was the first time I realised that
comics can be fun. Twenty years later
and I’ve had the honour of working with
Alan Martin on a few Tank Girl stories,
which are hopefully helping a whole new
generation of warped young minds to
discover her.
Now if you’re thinking, “Who the
#$@! is Tank Girl?”, do yourself a favour
and buy as many books as you can. But
if you’re already a fan, then you’ll
understand how excited I was whenBrett Parson
LOCATION: USBrett is a
freelance
illustrator and
comic book
artist from
America’s East Coast.
Recently he’s worked
on a comic series for
DC/Vertigo called New
Romancer, and on the
21st Century Tank Girl
title for Titan Comics.
http://ifxm.ag/bparsonImagineFX contacted me about having
her on the cover. This workshop reveals
my process of creating an image of Tank
Girl from the rough sketch and final line
work in SketchBook Pro, to the finished
colours in Photoshop. It’ll help to have an
understanding of basic drawing methods,
and how to treat light and shadow. But all
of these techniques can be applied to a
wide range of skill sets and styles. So strap
on your boots, slap a Band Aid on your
head, and let’s have some fun!1
ROUGH SKETCH
I find SketchBook Pro to have a much more natural
feeling for drawing than Photoshop. And its rulers and circle
tools can’t be beat. So using SketchBook, I create a sketch
of how I want the cover to look. It gives me an idea of how
everything will fit together, taking into consideration where
different cover elements, such as text and titles, will go.2
CLEAN UP THE SKETCH
Sometimes it seems like overkill, but I often do a
trace of the roughs to clean things up before I move on to
finished lines. I lower the Opacity of the existing layer, and
create a new layer on top of that. Using a light colour and
a soft Pencil brush I quickly trace over the image, adding a
few elements and removing some that I no longer want.SKETCHBOOK PRO & PHOTOSHOP
GET YOUR
RESOURCES
SEE PAGE 146
PRO SECRETS
KEEP WORKING AT
YOUR VISION
Don’t always settle
for your first choice.
Often after I’ve
finished colouring,
I’ll create duplicates
of certain layers and
play with the colours.
This gives me a
chance to visualise
other ideas that I
might not have
thought of while
getting my initial
colour scheme down.VIDEO
AVAILABLEWorkshops