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First things first: Before you even think of drawing anything, you must carefully select the paper you want to draw on (unless you plan to draw everything on a computer, in which case I can't help you, because all my methods involve paper). This implies the size, quality, color and texture (if any) of the paper, that should be adapted to the techniques you plan on using (for example: if you want to use watercolours, copier paper is definitely NOT an option)

The size of the paper is usually imposed by the size of the scanner you are going to use (we are talking about webcomics, after all) and which usually restricts this choice to A4 format (210x297 mm)

The quality of the paper actually means its DENSITY, which in normal (copier) paper is about 50-60 g/mp for a thickness of 2 microns (that makes copier paper permeable to liquid media such as watercolours and markers) My personal choice in the matter would be a Canson A4 scketckbook with 120 g/mp 5 micron thick paper, well suited for both dry (pencils, chalk, you name it..) and wet (watercolour, ink, markers) drawing techniques

Colour.For drawing webcomics it's advisable to use white paper rather than any other colour (it's easy to scan and it can be tinted later on the computer), but now I'm not the one to decide in your case, am I?

Texture.I don't think textured paper is a viable option for webcomics, because it scans rather poorly, but you're welcome to try.

The first phase in drawing a comic page should be drawing thumbnails to get a clear image on how you actually want the page to look ( I usually skip this part, because I'm able to do that while drawing the first rough sketches) For this, any paper and any drawing tool goes, because it's "for your eyes only" (a while back I used to draw the thumbnails on my class notes). Also, the thumbnail is usually small, but be sure to USE THE SAME PROPORTIONS AS THE REAL PAGE, or else you will find yourself with layout errors later on.

Although they have different sizes, A4, A5, and A6 formats have the same proportions (as illustrated by the chart below) so carrying a A6 sketchbook for drawing your thumbnails is certainly better than dragging along some bulky A4 paper (that's because you never know where inspiration strikes)

The second stage of an emerging comic page is the so-called "blue", a rough sketch drawn to size and on the actual paper you are going to use, and it bears that name because it's drawn in blue pencil (light blue scans very poorly, as you can see from the above image, and it's virtually invisible when scanning B&W)

Some comic artists use special brands of pencils for this stage, but I draw with any blue pencil I can find first around my room (for the above page I bumped into a Bryunzeel "Aquarel", but any type of pencil goes: Herlitz, Lyra, Kooh-I-Noor, Staedler...)

After drawing the "blue" I re-check to see if I'm happy with the character's expresions and general layout of the page (unfortunately, I got to making this tutorial while working on a comic page without many characters in it)

If I like the result (I don't have to like it 100% at this stage), I move on to adding a little detail, as well as tracing shadows using a black graphite pencil ( I use a Kooh-I-Noor "Versatyl" mecanical pencil with 4b graphite leads as my "main weapon" as well as a 0.5 mm Rotring "Tikky II" with 2b leads for finer details)

The next step is inking. Some artists are able to skip this part by scanning their graphite as Grayscale (8-bit) images and then clean them up in Photoshop, but I prefer scanning an inked picture as a 1-bit B&W, because this avoids big clean-up operations later on, as well as reducing the time I have to sit in front of the computer (screen radiation is harmful for the eyes).

As inking tools I used a Unix "Revolution" ball-point pen for general lineart and a black permanent marker (with wedge shaped tip) for shadows. When inking characters I usually also get involved with other tools such as 0.25 to 0.7 mm Rotring "Isograph" and 2.0 Reform "Rephograph"technical pens, as well as a variety of paintbrushes , or, lately, a Pentel brushpen.

After inking the page should be left to dry a few minutes, and then all graphite cleaned off with a white ereaser, making the page ready for scanning.

Usually, this is the point where I scan the page, any work from this stage on taking place entirely on the computer. My prefered resolution is 300dpi 1-bit color depth (to filter off any remainig graphite, as well as the blue pencil) and eventhough I usually convert it afterwards to Grayscale (8-bit) and save it as a .Jpeg, it is beter to also save the file as a .bitmap to allow for a good quality backup should something go wrong.

Although I'm not a great fan of "Photoshopping" (and that's why I use Corel Photo-Paint!), I must agree that this- or a similar progam- can be very time-saving, especially on a tight school shedule like my own.

After cleaning the rough ink page, I draw the panel borders with the "line" tool,as well as smoothing text cells with the rectangle tool, and adding text. The size of the text and the font are yours to choose, but keep in mind that it should be easily readable once resampled and ready to be posted on the net. For my own comics I use the 'overexposed' font at size '14' for an image size of 2200X3000 pixels (that's what an A4 scanned at 300dpi gives you) then resample it to about half the size and save it in .bmp or .jpeg format.( If you choose to save it as a .jpeg, be sure to save with the maximum quality level, because the anti-aliasing ruins the quality of the lines) It's a good idea to name your file something like "page X lineart" and conserve it for later, because you never know when the computer might crash

There are many programs you can use to add colour (or just shading and effects) on a lineart, once scanned, but I'm just going to talk about the one I'm currently using, that being Metacreations "Painter" (if you don't have or don't like Painter, you can also use Open Canvas or Photoshop, but don't ask me how to employ them)

After some time of experimenting with Painter, I developped a technique that, last time I checked, was not in use by anybody else. The "normal" approach to colouring on the computer would be adding different layers of paint while preserving the Lineart as a "mask" or a locked background layer, to prevent any damage to it during colouring...After finishing, the file is then saved as a .riff (painter format) to keep all layers accesible.

It's a very good method, but unfortunately it makes for HUGE temporary files (in my first days of using Painter I once got myself a file that was about 150 MB in size) a fact that not only slows the computer down, but also augments the risk of a catastrophic error wiping off your entire work, since you olny have one masive file to play with.

Since my computer is by now, overcrowded (I rarely get as much as 200 MB free for swap files) I was forced to develop alternative techniques that would save me time and precious HDD space, while maintaining the level of quality. DISCLAIMER: this is a very risky method, because once finished with a layer you have to merge it and thus you lose the ability to edit it, but it has the advantages of being quick, space saving and provides you with additional "working" backups in case of unexpected failure (I know by now I've probably annoyed you all with this "do as many backups as you can" thing, but trust me, I learned this lesson the hard way, while working on a school project, by losing EVERYTHING only hours before having to turn it in).

So what I do to colour my pages is use the "watercolour' tool in Painter (You can't use the "bucket fill" tool to add colour/grads to closed shapes unless you have your lineart in .bmp or very good quality .jpeg because the anti-alias will give you jagged colour edges - of course you might still be able to do it by "fiddling" with the "range" setting on the tool, but that's too much of 'trial and error' for my taste) I aply the colour using the "broad water brush" tool, wiping off the surplus paint with the "wet ereaser" and drying every paint layer before attempting to put in the next, pretty much as I would do on a real watercolour painting. (I accomplish deffinitive "drying" by saving after each layer into work copies ["page x clr 1", "page x clr 2" and so on] on high-quality .jpegs to save space)

After adding all colour layers (you should think of shading while doing that) some extra effects could be added by using the "bleach eraser" tool to create light spots (be wary that in .jpeg form any but the "wet eraser" are able to 'rub out' the lineart, so they should be used carefully). Also you can add extra layers of paint to create shadows (if you are using colours, the shadows should be drawn with the complementary colour to allow for more contrast [see picture below]. If you are only adding shades of gray, an uniform hue would suffice)

After you have obtained the final version of your page, it is always good to save it at the best available quality (at this stage you can erase the other 'working' copies if you feel you need more space) But since on the web space is also a major issue (most webhosts will only provide as much as 25 MB for your personal use) the pages displayed on the net should be as small as posible, while stil readable. I often create another copy (usually "page x net") from the finished picture, and save it as a 75% quality .jpeg after resampling it to the desired size (for my pages I use 750x 1000 pixels, for my "In the DARK" comic [used in this tutorial is page 12] and 650x600 for my other strip, "Crossover" [it has a different format])

I hope you enjoyed my oh-so-brief incursion into the wonderful world of comic art, and that you feel inspired and ready to draw your own... If you liked my drawings, you can see the whole comic (as well as other comics) at my site: "In the Dark"

Long live comics! ;)