How to draw a crowd scene

Q: I’m a graphic artist for a newspaper. I loved your piece you did called Holiday Find it. My question is about the perspective in the illustration. Do you sketch then retrace your illustration to clean it up the pict? Can you give me any tips or tricks to creating a dimensional piece of art?

Yes, I just kept retracing every time the image got too messy.

I just used rulers and curve-tools, and, yes, the piece got messy occasionally. I also have a drafting table with an inset light-box which helps tremendously for all that tracing.

Here’s the process:

Step 1: Pen sketch

I started with a pen sketch on lined paper (probably should have started with a thumbnail but whatever).

Step 2: Blueline

Next, I scanned the sketch and reworked it in photoshop; using the line tool here and there to make a blue-line wire-frame sort of thing. I printed this out and started sketching in people and other stuff. I think this was the rough I sent to the Art Director.

Step 3: Rough

Then I re-scanned and removed all the crap I didn’t like. I enlarged the image in Photoshop to full-size, printed it out (on two printer pages which I taped together), and went over it again in pencil, adding more people and tightening stuff along the way.

Step Four: Final

In the final step, I traced the full-size sketch on a light table and inked with a pigma micron 08. I scanned a final time and coloured in Photoshop.

Here’s the final (Click to enlarge):

So, you’ll notice I didn’t go with any perspective. I tried to use parallel lines for everything so I could get a clear layout of the space. Kind of like something one would see in a Sims video game.

I was also reading a lot of Seth Fisher’s comics at the time – and he does a lot of great crowd scenes in the clear-line style, with flat perspective and a vibrant palette. Check out examples of his stuff I used for reference/inspiration, here, here, and here.

So there’s the long answer to a short question. Hope that was useful.