The Ward-O-Matic: A How-to on Black & White (drawing process with Photoshop)

"As promised, I thought I'd show you guys a little 'how-to' on the thought processes for my recent Illustration Friday piece, Black & White. You can add this to your Special Edition Ward-O-Matic files, I guess. Since I did not record my progress when I initially worked on this piece, I tried to replicate the steps here the best I could. First, the concept. I immediately thought of a film noir scene when I first read of the week's theme, black & white, and so, being that I had recently wrote about Frank Miller's Sin City, I wanted to get real dark and gritty. I wanted to go to both extremes with the tone, from bright whites to jet blacks, from bright lights to sunken shadows. So, what a better setting to convey this type of scene, than in a bar? I sketched this guy out with my red Col-Erase pencil on animation paper on the second try, and then scanned him in at 150 dpi (300 dpi is normal for print and such, but since I knew this would be on the web, I figured there's no need for him to take up too much space in my computer), and tweaked levels to darken the subtle lines. I need as much of the pencil lines as possible before my next stage. (Full tutorial at link)"