Any good ideas how to draw ponies without a tablet?

[SkyMunki]

So far I've tried plain black ink, scanning, but it looks rubbish.

And also coloured lines, slightly darker than the fill colour, then colouring it on photoshop, that looks okay, but not great.

Anypony have any suggestions?

Also, any ideas how to draw better ponies would be happily accepted too

[flutterscotch]

Pastels.

[Ginger Mint]

hi hi

Vectors are a good alternative. You can sketch something out on paper if you like, then trace over the outlines with vectors to get the shapes nice and crisp. I do all my vector work with a mouse, but it does help to get used to the hotkeys so you don't have to click and switch tools constantly. I switch between the cursor, the add point tool and the adjust handles tool constantly as I work, so it helps to be able to just use hotkeys.

[SkyMunki]

I tried pastels (the only I have are oil pastels) and here: http://www.canterlot.com/gallery/image/1113-harmony-2/

[SkyMunki]

hi hi

Vectors are a good alternative. You can sketch something out on paper if you like, then trace over the outlines with vectors to get the shapes nice and crisp. I do all my vector work with a mouse, but it does help to get used to the hotkeys so you don't have to click and switch tools constantly. I switch between the cursor, the add point tool and the adjust handles tool constantly as I work, so it helps to be able to just use hotkeys.

Urm, what's Vectors? how do I get it?

[brianblackberry]

Well for all my pony images, I draw them all by hand with good old pencil and paper, specifically a 2H 0.5mm mechanical pencil. It is these pencils I then scan in. When I scan I set my scanner to do 400 dpi and scan in with the color setting. Then I import directly into Photoshop and do the following:

• Adjustments -> Levels and and use the Level tool to remove very light smudges and extra lines
  
• Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and click the Colorize checkbox and then set my Hue slider to 200 to create blue lines
  

At this point I usually ink freehand using SAI's pen tool and bring it back to Photoshop for coloring and some fine ink details. that would require a tablet though. As you wish to do this without a tablet, I would instead recommend the Photoshop Pen Tool to create the varied lines you need. Here is an excellent tutorial on that.

Another method is to both pencil and ink traditionally. Scan the inks in at 400 dpi but at double the size of the image before scanning, then reduce back to the normal size with will help smooth out some of the inks. Before you reduce though, use the Level tool again to remove any unneeded grays.

[brianblackberry]

Urm, what's Vectors? how do I get it?

A vector is a graphic that uses geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics. Adobe Illustrator uses this exclusively. If you have Photoshp though, you can create vectors using the Photoshop Pen Tool.

[Angie Cakes]

if you're looking for a program that's easy to use without a tablet, the two programs I use are anime studio and manga studio. both cost $50.

anime studio is a vector animation program. if you want a picture, you'll have to take a screenshot of the preview image. the tools are hard to figure out if you're animating, but if you're just drawing, they're fairly simple. plus anything you draw is really easy to adjust. this is the program I use for all of my baisic ponies

manga studio is a program more silimlar to photoshop, but it deals exclusivly with drawing. when you draw free-hand, the lines automatically smooth out a little bit. but if you still have a hard time getting a nice line, there's a ruler tool you can use. this is also a good program if you ever decide to one day get a tablet.

but based on your user picture, it looks like you already have photoshop or you use gimp or something, so this all might be completely useless XD

[Ginger Mint]

hi hi

If you're looking for something free, you can always use Inkscape. It handles vector graphics and its open source.