Why is everyone drawing with blue lines?! IS IT A PENCIL CRAYON? IS IT A PLANE? Is it magic?! Is that why everything they draws looks so good? If you draw with it then your stuff should look just as good, right? RIGHT?! Bear with me as I unravel the mystery of the blue pencil for you. Trust me, it's everything and more.
Why do artists use blue pencils?
Have you ever seen … and then wondered why… people in the animation industry, and illustration industry in general use blue pencils? Simple! I explain it all in the video above, but I think it’s kind of interesting. Whenever someone sees me draw with a blue pencil, they kind of go ‘hmmm ahhhh’ — as if it’s an understood thing that illustrators who are professional all use a blue. It’s like the classic artist move — do an undersketch with blue and the real sketch will look 10x better by default!
It’s not like that. Well it kind of is. But also not. Let me tell you a bit of the why.
Blue pencils were used by people in the design industry as well as the animation industry because it was a tone that was visible to our eyes on roughs, but when scanned in with corrections, was not visible by the scanner and so would make copies that didn’t have the ‘editing lines’ on it. So for instance if you did a sketch in non photo blue, then did a ‘cleaner’ line on top with ink, you wouldn’t have to worry about erasing anything when you scanned it. But if you had used a lead pencil, the scanner would pick up any pencil marks left on the page even after erasing. Very useful for things like animation frames.
Designers could pass their idea around the office and get notes and feedback in non photo blue, and then make copies for an edit that didn’t have the notes written on it. Also very useful!
Remember back then, scanners and video equipment and printers were not as colour savvy as they are today, so a lot of channels would get left out — or blend in to the white of the paper and just disappear altogether. Nowadays you can emulate that effect by just choosing not to pick up any blue channels (channel being a colour representation like Red, Yellow, Blue, etc).
For me personally, I sketch in blue as an underlayer not because I find it useful for scanning in my work — I actually hardly ever do that. I do it because I like the aesthetic, and in addition to that, it provides me with a easy way to differentiate my rough from my clean rough. I will sketch in blue, draw in blue, and then draw a more detailed sketch over top in lead or something. Because the lead is so much darker than the non photo blue, I am able to finesse my ideas more cleanly and more efficiently.
There are a number of options available for non photo blue pencils. Particularly there are the Pentel, Staedtler and the Prismacolor Col-Erase brands that stand out. It’s best to experiment with what you prefer, but I find that the Pentel leads tend to be quite waxy, whereas the Staedtler less so. For my purposes it doesn’t really matter, but I do like how the Pentel ones come in handy mechanical lead formats. Meanwhile the Staedtler is a tried and true industry champion.
You can grab your own blue pencils from my affiliate link here on Amazon, and purchases benefit me at no cost to you: Staedtler Non Photo Blue Pencil
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