A Drawing That Changed Along With Me
- Preston Cram
- Nov 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 25
This drawing, now titled Memories of an Ageless Expanse, nearly didn't see the light of day. Despite becoming one of my favorite things I've made in recent years, there was a moment when I was seriously questioning whether or not to clean up the line art and do color. I ended up making some pretty huge revisions in order to keep my enthusiasm going and get it across the finish line, and I'm glad I did.
I'll focus on the drawing itself today and then talk about color in a dedicated post later. So I'll start by sharing the final ink art and then chat through the series of edits (as well as some changes in my art process) so you can see what this one had to go through to reach its final form.
Memories of an Ageless Expanse was the fourth in a series of six small drawings I did this year on 5.5" x 8.5" paper (I talked about all six of those drawings in a dedicated post last month), and it marked a transition in my drawing style from a chunkier, looser style into an approach with more detail and crosshatching.
The two drawings I did immediately after Memories had a very different feel than this. I was excited about that new direction, and the result was this one ended up feeling a little... erm, plain? But I also loved the general imagery in it, so I found myself in a bit of a dilemma: should I spend time finishing color for a piece that isn't a representation of my new drawing style? Or should I just allow an image that I was excited about to slip into the dust bin?
To see how far this one had to travel, here's the original pencil drawing.
You can probably already see some huge differences between this and the final ink, not just in the overall level of detail but especially in the woman's head and face. I did the initial drawing quickly and honestly kind of rushed it, and then when I came back with fresh eyes I saw several areas for improvement.
So I initially inked this the old-fashioned way – with brushes and a crow quill on the actual pencil drawing. But then I made some significant edits in Photoshop to get her head and face to look better. So, here's a look at both versions: the first is the original ink scan, the second is the edits.
So this was a little better, but two important things happened at this point: in my new drawings, I started using a mechanical pencil with a finer point to dial in the details and cross-hatching. I also bought an iPad and started inking my drawings digitally.
Any digital drawings I did prior to this (as on Moments After the End) were done with a plastic Wacom Intuos tablet, the kind that basically functions like a mouse. So prior to the iPad, I had never done any drawing directly on a screen.
But I loved the iPad. I actually loved it way more than I expected. And a combination of the finer mechanical pencil for the drawings and using the iPad for ink caused my next drawing to have a very different feel from this one. For reference, here's what that one looks like (keep in mind this drawing is the same exact size as Memories):
So, yeah...way more detail and hatching lines in there.
Feeling uncomfortable with how chunky Memories felt by comparison, I decided to completely re-ink it on the iPad. I knew this wouldn't be 100% effective because the original drawing wasn't made with the fine-point mechanical pencil, but I believed it would still help, and it did.
Here's another look at the final ink version done on the iPad (which, if you're counting, is actually the third version of the ink) along with a couple comparison images.
That iPad version restored enough of my enthusiasm for the piece to feel good going into color.
On a side note – all of this demonstrates an odd by-product of my process where the ink and color stages lag behind the pencil drawings. And because I'm always pushing myself to improve my abilities on new art, I often notice room for improvement when I come back to a drawing to do ink and color.
And that was certainly true for Memories of an Ageless Expanse. Color is done now (I'll talk about that soon in its own post) and I'm very happy I stuck with it. I'll always remember it as a pivot point into a new creative style for me.
I'll leave you with some comparison images of the original pen and ink work I did on paper and the final ink work I did on the iPad. Thanks for being here.
I share process videos, sketches, and behind-the-scenes work as new pieces take shape. If you'd like to see the next stages of this world as they’re built, you can find me here:
It's so cool to catch a glimpse of your creative process