1 The Specifications: Getting Started with Any Illustration

Before you get started with any illustration, you need to take a moment to consider the specifications. How you set up your page will depend on if you are working traditionally or digitally.

Traditional-style Illustrations

Traditional illustrations (those made on paper or another physical support, like a canvas) are still just as common as working digitally, so you should feel comfortable working in whatever way you prefer. But you must take into consideration some basics to set the page up correctly.

Working traditionally has many benefits. The paper and medium you choose create textures that cannot be accurately replicated by digital artwork. It creates something absolutely unique that could never be exactly replicated by another. Many illustrators love the tactile nature of it, as well as the sound of their medium against the paper.

However, you must be much more careful to sketch thumbnails, to transfer sketches to clean paper, and to keep your support clean and free of smudges, crinkles, indentations from hard-leaded pencils, or tears. It is much more difficult to make changes, and depending on the medium, you may not be able to correct mistakes (think about using ink). However, some artists like the challenge of these limitations and think it is worth it for the gorgeous beauty of a finished, traditional work of art. Mastering traditional mediums sets you up for technical success in any medium in which you work, as it develops the habits of working carefully and caring for your work of art.

Dimensions (traditional):

There are a few ways of approaching how to think about your finished work. Unlike digital artwork, where you can zoom in very far, depending on resolution, you cannot zoom in on a paper. This means you must work largely enough to achieve the detail you desire.

Some traditional illustrators prefer to work larger than the finished project specifications, knowing that the work they create is not the final project: it still needs to be scanned or photographed. The trick to this: working 1.5x or 2x the size of your finished work allows you to get the detail you want; moreover, when the work is printed at the proper size, the illustration looks tighter and crisper. This is especially true if you are working on illustrations that are meant to be printed small, like for a spot illustration in a book.

If you choose to size up, you must make all illustrations for any given project at the same scale, or they will not read the same once they are printed at the finished size. You want your line quality to remain the same over the course of a project.

A consideration to keep in mind when “sizing up:” you can only work as big as the paper you have access to. So pick the biggest illustration in the project you are working on. For instance, if you are working to illustrate a book, a spread (two-page illustration) will be the largest. If you multiply each of the dimensions of that page by 1.5 or 2, do you have a paper that is big enough to support that? You do not want to get into a situation where you are trying to digitally stitch together two illustrations drawn on two different pages. Head to the art store and see how large they sell individual sheets of the type of paper you would like to use: that may help inform your decision.

How to Calculate for Sizing Up:

If the finished illustration, with added “trim” (see below), is 8×10”, then sizing up 1.5x would make this illustration 12”x15”. If it is doubled in size, the finished illustration would be 16×20”. Do not forget to leave .5” on all sides for a trim, and an inch in the middle if working with a double page spread.

Starting a Digital Document:

In the same manner, if you are working digitally, you can choose your specifications when you open a new document. (Note: you cannot change to a higher resolution after starting an image, so be sure to pay attention at this first step.)

Dimensions (Digital):

You can choose to size an image based on print dimensions (inches) or digital dimensions (pixels). Remember to calculate the size of your image including the trim; however, most programs will allow you to change the size of your canvas after starting if you forget this step.

Resolution (DPI):

Resolution is the number of pixels that can be displayed in a square inch. DPI is another term for resolution and stands for dots per inch. Traditionally, if you want to print to the exact specifications of dimension that you’ve chosen, 300DPI is the standard resolution needed for printing, as most printers are limited to 300 dots per inch when printed. Web quality images are standardly saved as 72DPI as the computer has less capability for display than does a print medium. However, some artists will double or triple their resolution if working digitally (or scanning traditional works). Working to a higher resolution will allow you to work with more detail and be more precise in tiny areas as there will be less pixelation (blurring of the image due to loss of quality). It will also allow you to print your work larger. So, for instance, if you had an 8×10” artwork on paper that you wanted to reproduce at 16×20 (2x the size), you could scan it at 600 DPI (300×2) in order to double its final size. Remember that the higher your resolution, the larger your file will be, which could slow down your computer or tablet.

It’s good practice to save one artwork under two names for print and web purposes, as they will have different resolutions. For instance, I save my scanned or digital artworks in this manner: “NAME-TITLE-300DPI” or “NAME-TITLE–72DPI” to differentiate. If you accidentally overwrite your high resolution image with a smaller dpi, you will lose your high resolution image, so take care at this step.

Lastly: always start big! You can size down a print quality, 300dpi image to 72DPI to make it a web quality image, but you cannot change a web quality 72DPI image to print quality. You cannot add information to a file if it has started small. All you will get is a 300DPI image with lots of pixelation.

Color Profile:

When working digitally, you must also consider the color profile at this point.  In order to pick correctly, you will need to know HOW your finished illustration will be used in its final form (for print or for web use) so that its color may be reproduced accurately.

Unlike a traditional artist’s color wheel, which shows how color in the form of paint function when mixed, the two main color profiles we’ll consider here work slightly differently than does paint.  The two main profiles to understand are RGB and CMYK.

RGB:

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is based on the primary colors of light. RGB is the standard choice for web images, as it relates to how computers process color. When mixed together, the primaries create white. This is the opposite of pigment or ink, which, when mixed, become duller and darker.

CMYK: 

CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black) is a printing color profile used by many but not all professional printers. These are the primary colors of printing, and it’s a subtractive process. You may better recognize the red from your traditional artist’s color wheel–which you have come to know as a primary color– as the combination of magenta and yellow (it’s become a secondary color!), and a true green as the combination of yellow and cyan, which is more of a sky blue than the traditional primary blue. Black, known as the key, is the combination of all three of these printing primary colors.

If working digitally with an end goal of printing, you may notice that your color palette is more subdued when working in a CMYK color profile as opposed to an RGB color profile. Reds in particular are more of a soft, reddish orange. It takes some getting used to.

(Note: it’s best to ask which color profile will be needed for your project, as some specialty printers, which use 12 or more inks, like giclée printers, find that RGB more accurately reproduces color for them. In cases such as these, using a CMYK color profile will actually produce colors which do not match your artwork, skewing pinks more magenta, yellows more neon, and greys more blue. So do your due diligence and find this out at the start to avoid extra steps later–to frustration [or lost money] when your work prints incorrectly and needs to be redone).

It is possible to convert images from CMYK to RGB and vice versa, which is useful if you need to have images for print and web. A CMYK image will not display properly on the web; colors will skew. So if you’re using that same image for the web, be sure to convert it to an RGB color profile before uploading to your website, or the colors will look skewed.

Background color:

When working digitally, some programs have a standard of starting with a transparent background, like Procreate. In Adobe Photoshop, you must choose the background color at this initial stage in the New File Window under “Background Contents”. If you need an image with a transparent background, start with a transparent background at this step. This is useful for printing things like t-shirts, stickers, or for making web images that will sit against a variety of color backgrounds. (In this case, be sure to save your file as a .PNG, which will preserve the transparent background. JPG will make your transparent background white, which would show up in print or web uses as a white square the same dimensions as your file.)

Here you see a screenshot from a “New File” on Adobe Photoshop. You can see I picked my dimensions, resolution, color mode, and background contents.

Trims

Most illustration projects will need you to consider using a trim or bleed area. Whether working traditionally or digitally, this increases the final size of your illustration and must be taken into account. Always check, if working with a publisher or client, if there is a particular size trim needed to meet the specifications of the printer. A general rule of thumb adds 1/2″ (.5″) to all four sides of an illustration. For instance, a drawing that is meant to be 8×10 would be increased to 9×11″ in total, taking into account for the trim. Trim sizes can vary within a project; cover designs often need an extra 3/4″ of trim (1.25″ total) to allow for the cover to be folded over the boards of the book. So always ask before proceeding a large project.

The purpose of the trim is to allow an illustration to be full bleed, which means that the color extends, or “bleeds,” all the way to the edge of the page. In order for this to work in a printing process, the illustration must continue past a trim line where the page will be cut by the printer. Below you see an illustration that I’ve laid out with a trim using rulers on Photoshop, but you can do this on any digital program. (If the program does not have built in rulers, be sure to add the trim lines on a separate layer that you can hide).

The blue lines are rulers that will not show in the saved image. They will show up under “View–Extras” and then can be pulled down from the ruler at the top and left of the window and released to mark any point on your document. The rulers must be turned on in the “View” dropdown menu.

In order to have a full bleed, the image must extend into the zone I’ve colored grey so you can see it easily. Imagine your image will be cut along these blue lines. You do not want anything of import in this grey area, as it will get lost in the final document. What you are trying to achieve is a perfect printed edge of color.

For example: here is an old drawing of mine where I did not plan for a trim. If I wanted this to print perfectly for a client printing this as a full bleed image in a book or magazine, I would have extended the image on all sides. See where the rulers overlap the image, marked at 1/2″ marks:

If this were to be trimmed along the trim lines:

As you see, I would lose enough information that the composition does not work, so don’t make your image first and then hope that it will work with a trim. Plan the image WITH THE TRIM from the start.

If working traditionally, you will have to make tiny marks on the edge of your page that can be easily hid. I like to use a little cross, like this.

If you are working with spot illustrations, or other illustrations that are not full bleed, then your image must fully fit within the trim lines for it to print as you imagine it.

Trims for double page illustrations:

For spreads, or double page illustrations for magazines or books, you need to imagine that it’s two pages with their trims stacked side by side. That means there will be a one inch gutter in the middle of the spread. This is where the pages will be bound and there will be information loss in these areas. So you need to plan it out when you plan the trim so that you have the proper dimension and know where to avoid putting important information, text, faces, or action.

Here is an example from my 2019 book The Lions at Night (RoadRunner Press, 2019).

You can see that no important information has been lost in the gutter or in the area of trim. Now picture this cropped along the outer trim line. The color extends all the way to the edge. So, this is an example of a full bleed image.