Video: Mike Cope drawing on Strathmore Bristol Board

The other post about the declining quality of the Strathmore bristol board has prompted quite a bit of response. Mike Cope has posted a video of him drawing a Valentines Day cartoon that appears in this months Readers Digest. He posts the following regarding his technique:

Each gag cartoon begin as a very light rough pencil sketch drawn on a piece of smooth-surfaced Strathmore Bristol board using a regular 2H pencil. I ink directly over my pencil work with Winsor & Newton Black Indian Ink using a pair of dip pens and brush. The pen nibs demonstrated in this video include a Hunt 512 and a Speedball 513EF in a Koh-I-Noor Penholder (No. 127N). I favour the 513EF for 99% of all my cartooning.

The original cartoon art measures 11″ x 14″ and is then scanned into Adobe Photoshop, where it is coloured in CMYK format. The finished cartoon is then emailed to the editors at Reader’s Digest Canada for consideration.

10 thoughts on “Video: Mike Cope drawing on Strathmore Bristol Board

  1. Beautiful. I’ll never get tired of watching people draw (or ink). Patrick Mcdonnell called it “magical” and I think that’s a fitting description.

    But I couldn’t help but be a little envious of inking with your right hand. I’m left handed and a bit of a contortionist to avoid smearing the ink.

  2. Thanks for the kind comments. Scott, you’re absolutely right about how “fast” most of us ink. When I first watched the recorded clips in real-time, it felt painfully slow.

    I think we get so focussed on what were doing that time slows down for us 🙂

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