It's been a Quactcast topic before, but it's something everyone likes to talk about- what's your favorite media/mediums to work with?

Although it's really nice to do some things digitally (especially with ‘undo’ features or automation), I think my favorites are all non-digital.

I've worked with crayons, which are challenging from a limited-color-range perspective, but it's hard to do any detail with them. Also they're tricky to scan, because the wax is reflective.

Art markers are nice, but I sometimes royally messed up mixing colors for shading, and you're still a bit limited as far as color possibilities go.

Watercolors let you do lots of colors, but the whole nature of the media and how you manage colors, light, etc was something I never got a good grasp on. However it's most relaxing for me, since often you have to work slowly enough to let layers dry.

I don't love inking enough to do finished pieces in ink only. But pencil just feels so unfinished! Charcoal I like, but it's too messy and I don't have the patience to do anything I'd consider “real” art.

Of course there's loads more than the drawing/coloring things I've listed here. Your favorites may not have anything to do with making comics, even!

I've worked with a LOT of different media in my time… I love digital most of all though- you have a full art studio's worth of potential and art storage in a teeny package.
The other thing is that with a piece of digital work it's so much easier to take it further and do more stuff with it- if it's on my phone or tablet I've got it with me all the time, or I can upload a copy to dropbox and access it from anything anywhere and continue working on it.

So my fave media at the moment is Sketchbook pro by Autodesk on my Galaxy Not 10.1

I've tried many different media (thanks to my art courses at school), but didn't stick with most of them long enough to get a good feel for them. When left to my own devices, I really only use pencils (H), pens (Staedtler, Edding), an old, but giant Wacom tablet and Photoshop. I'd been using crowquills and ink for a few years, but switched to pens for “inking”. Actual ink tends to take more time and be more messy, and I needed to be quicker when working on comics.

Occasionally, I've done some watercolor pieces, but the only color medium I ever really (somewhat) got the hang of was digital - Photoshop. I have a love/hate relationship with it, because coloring still takes soooo long… I'd just like to be able to tell my stories as quickly as I come up with them, but that's completely utopian.

Though I am also a big fan of digital, I've had a lot of fun with Prismacolor markers. They're pretty fun for shading art in black and white. I don't think I'd ever make the investment to buy enough of them to fully color something.

I also mess with Sculpey from time to time. I'm not very good with it, though.

Oh, I forgot - I also love brush pens, because of the easily variable line weight and calligraphic look.

(BTW, I love to look at Prismacolor marker pictures, but have never tried them.)

YER MOM!
no i'm kidding. markers and colored pencils. Watercolors too. for inking i use those pigma sensei pens. varrying tip points.

For traditional drawing I enjoy working with GraphGear 500 Mechanical Drafting Pencils. I have four different pencils with the following lead sizes: 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 and I use H or HB lead for all of them. The varying line thickness really makes a difference in the end result and I use the wider leads for dark outlines.

My favorite pens are the light blue Pentel RSVP fine pens for sketching and the Energel 0.7 black ink for inking.

When I am feeling pretty emotional and need to draw it out, I use a mixture of water color and gouache paints. They are both water based but one is transparent and the other is opaque. I just feel that the fluidity of painting with water helps me express myself better than oil or acrylic.

When creating for web based art, nothing beats the range of Photoshop. I am a fan of digital coloring because it looks so clean and the spectrum of colors is much larger than with real markers.

I am a fan of coloring with copic markers in grayscale. I only need 8 pens- Cool Gray (2,4,6,8) and Warm Grey (2,4,6,8). These pens allow easy blending to make a gradation of light to dark grays. The only problem with copics is that they dry out, bleed through paper, and they are pretty expensive. I have found ways around this by purchasing the proper paper and buying refill inks that cost a fraction of the original pen.

On my iPad, I use SketchBookX, SketchBook Pro, Art Rage, and Paper by 53. My all time favorite is Paper by 53 because the interface looks like real moleskine books and their pens/pencils/watercolors/inks/markers actually resemble the real life counterpart even when finger drawing digitally. It is a really cool program to sketch out ideas, but in no way compares to sketching pencil to paper or photoshop.

Hawk wrote:
Though I am also a big fan of digital, I've had a lot of fun with Prismacolor markers. They're pretty fun for shading art in black and white. I don't think I'd ever make the investment to buy enough of them to fully color something.

I have a full color selection and they are fun to work with. But if you do one major work in BW you will run the markers dry.


I used to doodle compulsively in pencil. Practically any weight from an HB to a Bic mechanical pencil. I have worked in so many other media that I have no favorite. The nearest though is acrylic paint glazes using a wet pallet. Whether miniature figures, sculpture or canvas I just love the results. I have used this wash/glaze technique to paint some of the figures in my comics.

However, other than that, none of this translates into a comic so it's photographs of dolls and lots of Photoshop and that is nowhere near my favorite medium. >_<

My favourite medium to work with is Madame Flaubert. She's a great medium, whose predctions about my life have been consistently so far from the truth it's become something of a running joke … why only yesterday she predicted I'd make a fool of myself in a public forum.

Gunwallace wrote:

I'd make a fool of myself in a public forum.

You will go to a council meeting and construct a clown from your own earwax!

ozoneocean wrote:

Gunwallace wrote:

I'd make a fool of myself in a public forum.

You will go to a council meeting and construct a clown from your own earwax!

Now that is just spooky! How did you know?

It's a gift! ^_^