I named this sketch “Speedfighter” (I know, duh, it’s in the title. Anyway).
I hadn’t really planned this ahead. As it often happens when I draw for fun at home, I draw things first and I find out what they are only when I’m close to the end.
In this particular case I was trying a technique the usual friend of mine uses sometimes to sketch environments and props.

The technique is about painting the main shapes in black with a big flat brush, and then detailing the rest in white.

Almost like a notan, but with more details in it.

So, nothing really new to be honest, we’ve been experimenting with notans for quite a while, and this is quite similar. However, it’s the first time I used it this way.
The result is a very nice comic-looking sketch and offers a lot of other advantages.

The big brush prevents you from going into details too early, and forces you to come up with interesting shapes early on rather than changing your mind further into the process. Also, since you only use one other colour to give more detail, you’re bound to use it sparingly and focus only on what is important.

Here’s a bunch of sketches I drew in under ten minutes. OMG ten minutes!

Now, since I have a key conveniently set up as “eraser” on my Cintiq (whereas  constantly reaching for the x key on the small keyboard on video to swap between black and white was quite awkward), I decided to erase the black instead of painting over it, which resulted in an interesting pipeline:
Having “holes” carved into the main shape allowed me to paint the layer beneath the main shape with a secondary colour. This meant that in just a few minutes I was able to complete the main sketch and knock out the colours, which means that 70% of the whole drawing was already pretty much finished.
The entire thing took me less than 30 minutes, which is surprising considering I don’t practice on hard surfaces that often.

So here’s the one I decided to develop further, our Speedfighter.

Since it looks fast and aggressive (there are guns on it after all), it was obviously a Speedfighter to me, but feel free to remember it as “the usual spaceship”.

I’m also posting a video of the process because I’m really loving this technique.
Enjoy some Bach in the meantime.

by Paolo Puggioni