As most creatives know, it takes a while to develop a process that works for you. My current process for full colour illustrations usually begins with a blunt 3B pencil and a sheet of watercolour paper.
I try to work with paper above 180 GSM, because it will be more adaptive to mixed media works and there is a lesser chance of crumpling.
With the pencil I would perform a quick gestural sketch of the initial subject, making sure to press lightly onto the paper as the pencil marks will need to be erased later on.
After a general impression of the image is complete, I go over the foreground and background details with more care still using a pencil at this stage. This is just to get it into my head which objects are meant to overlap.
Initial sketch
When the sketching is complete I switch to aa 00 watercolour brush / speedball fountain pen using india ink to draw over the lines which have been determined by the sketch. I try to keep a scrap piece of paper underneath my drawing hand as to prevent smudging the ink.
When the ink is finally complete, there are usually a few blemishes on the drawing that would need to be digitally tidied.
Fully inked piece on A3
I take a photograph of the ink drawing in RAW format to preserve maximum resolution, convert it to a TIFF image and start the colouring process in Photoshop. This can be the most time consuming stage figuring out which colours are suitable and limiting the colour palette.
Occasionally I'd add more illustrations in the backdrop although for consistency I try not to incorporate too much digital drawing into a piece which was originally ink on paper.
A piece after being coloured in Photoshop, backdrop was also created
A possible final stage involves processing the drawing with Google Nik Collection. It's an ageing tool, although still useful for subtle post processing.
There you have it! My first blog post on ink illustration, hope it was worthwhile reading.
If you have any thoughts or questions shoot me an email.