Around the corner from us there used to be this really sketchy little bar, the type of place where the windows were really dark so you couldn’t really see in, and I always figured if I opened the door that the music would stop playing and a whole bunch of big scary guys in wife beaters would stop talking and turn and look menacingly at me. (I have a very active imagination.) It was not a welcoming place. They went out of business, and the doors were padlocked for a long time.
Several months ago, the place was papered up again and under construction, and I was overjoyed when I got my Dish newsletter and it announced it would be a yakitori place! Well, yakitori doesn’t really describe it. Yusho calls itself “yakitori inspired”; it’s Asian/fusion small plates, I guess, but what you need to know is it’s DELICIOUS. I coudln’t even fit everything we had on the page. The unagi/hominy brandade was probably my favorite, and the twice-fried chicken was perfectly crispy, perfectly juicy. The duck takoyaki (duckoyaki?) was a tasty little ball of comfort food, and the pickled garlic that accompanied some of the dishes was a bright, crisp taste that really woke up my taste buds. Their cocktails were delicious too, and they have a “shochu soda” that’s out of this world, a real spritzy citrus flavor that really delighted me.
It’s small plates, so it’s a bit pricy, especially if you’re hungry. But the staff were incredibly friendly, the atmosphere was a happy, laid-back hip, and the food was delicious. We’ll definitely be back.
Ok! on to process shots number two! (for notes on my blue lines and inking, see the previous comic) I was going to give you guys the whole scan/color/upload rundown, but it ended up being too long. So today’s just going to be cleaning up the lines. I scan my page at 300 dpi (print resolution) in grayscale. Here’s what my page usually looks like when I scan it (this is partly because my scanner is old and crappy, and partly just how this works):
What I do next is a mix of things. The goal here is to get the darkest, smoothest black lines possible, and the whitest whites. I’ll usually hit brightness/contrast a few times (you’ll find this under image > adjustments in Photoshop):
and then I’ll run a quick median filter (filter > noise > median)to smooth the lines a bit. You can adjust the amount depending on your art, but I don’t usually do a median above 2:
And then just to clean up the last of it, I’ll do a bunch of dodging and burning. Your dodge and burn are in the tools palette, just below blur/smudge. I usually dodge the highlights at about 10-15%, and burn the shadows at the same rate, just hitting what needs to be hit. It’s a pretty unscientific process. And then we have a nice, clean comic to start coloring!
It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not so bad. I do these so often that I have the keyboard shortcuts ingrained in my fingers’ muscle memory; this is actually the fastest part of the whole process for me. Next comic we’ll talk about colors!
Greetings!
Love the illustration!
Hope you had a wonderful time, please say hello next time you are in for dinner!
with respect
matthias
Thank you so much, Matthias!! The meal was outstanding, and we had a great time. We will definitely be back!
My boyfriend is delighted that his late night options in the neighborhood are tacos, the greasy diner up on Belmont, and your twice-fried chicken with kanzuri chili and matcha!
YUM + DAMN… = YUMMN!
Sometimes this is a horrible comic to eat at lunch time because I no longer want my lunch, I want your illustration. Wow those look good.
I now very much want to give the median filter a shot…I never thought of using that to smooth out my pencil/ink lines before. This could save me quite a bit of time in the future <33
Hey Sarah! I just found you through the magic of Yusho via FB and wanted to say I love your art AND that you take the time to show how you do it! I’m a neighbor— been here about 14 years now. When the house just adjacent to the scary bar (now Yusho) was briefly a pizza place, my husband and I walked in to have lunch one day and experienced your big scary guys in wife beaters scenario, so you’re right on. We actually tried to get the bar’s liquor license revoked as there’d been a shooting there and hello, why is there a scary bar so close to a school?! Whoever owned it back then was in with the alderman at the time and so we got nowhere. Needless to say, SUPER happy to have such a completely lovely spot with such talented owners now. Will be visiting them soon. And will be visiting your page again, too! I really like it here. thanks.
I’m going to try your Photoshop technique at some point. It looks a lot easier than the way I learned.
Basically, I scan in grayscale then adjust the threshold so that it knocks out all the grey. Then I convert to Bitmap. Matt Madden and Jessica Able explained it that way in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. Not sure what the advantages are for either way.
Lately, I’ve been just scanning them in the office. I don’t have Photoshop there, so I mostly just scan it black and white and don’t edit it in any way.
@scott: just like any medium or technique, there’s lots of ways to do it right! You just have to find what you’re most comfortable with! I like using brightness/contrast with median a lot, and it’s served me well over the years. But you can also get rid of your grey values with curves, exposure, levels, thresholds, any number of ways. I like brightness/contrast because you can do it slowly, in steps, and you have a lot of control over what you lose and what you keep, but also because I’m really comfortable with it. I don’t like converting to bitmap, because it seems to make some of my lines harsher and more jagged, but that’s a completely personal choice. (also you can’t do bitmap and RGB at the same time, and this comic is always in color)
It sounds like this used to be a legitimately sketchy bar, but you might be surprised by some of those places with blacked-out windows! A couple of my favorite Korean places look just like that, like Dancen (on Lincoln just south of Foster). I found them looking on Yelp for a place that makes dukbokki, and they turned out to be fantastic, despite looking like a front for who-knows-what.
Also, I haven’t posted before, but have been reading for a while now and wanted to say thanks for all the great comics :)