Postdrawing

Postdrawing is a workflow concept used in visual arts and related fields to describe the stage that follows an initial drawing where further refinement, cleanup, and preparation are performed to produce a finished piece or a production-ready asset. The term is not universally standardized and its exact meaning varies across disciplines, including illustration, comics, animation, and concept art. In general, postdrawing encompasses steps that convert rough or informal drawings into clean, consistent, and deployable artwork.

In practice, postdrawing often involves digitizing the original drawing through scanning or photographing, isolating line work, and applying refinements to line quality and proportion. Digital workflows commonly use layers to separate pencil lines from ink, color, and shading, enabling non-destructive adjustments. Processes may include inking (either digitally or traditionally), colorization, value and contrast adjustments, texture application, and final compositing with backgrounds or other elements. The aim is to produce a stable, high-quality image suitable for reproduction, animation frames, or print.

Tools and techniques vary but frequently rely on graphics tablets, scanners, and software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, or Toon Boom for animation pipelines. In comics and animation, postdrawing often overlaps with clean-up, line art refinement, and color finishing, forming a bridge between rough drafting and final rendering.

Critiques of postdrawing focus on preserving original drawing character versus over-processing, as well as concerns about labor practices and accessibility of digital workflows. Proponents argue that structured postdrawing improves consistency, efficiency, and the ability to produce high-quality, scalable assets across media. See also: inking, clean-up, color grading, digital compositing.