The Eye of the Printer...

What the eye wants to see often jars with what the mind thinks should be drawn on the page. Foreshortening is a great example of this, especially if you're starting out with drawing in 3D. When it comes to digital work that's designed to be printed out, then the colour gamut of the printer is also something that has to be taken into consideration because everything is rendered differently on different devices.

I remember the first time I used an LCD monitor: not only was I thankful for the softer lighting and the lack of headaches after hours of usage, the colour difference was quite marked. Same goes for my printer. There is a noticeable difference in document colours when I pay (through the nose) for the proprietary cartridges as to when I use my Continuous Inking System. So, what looks good on my monitor is going to look a little different when I print it out on cardstock. Take a look...

On the left we see the original eye-catching sewer grate I'd just finished working on yesterday, on the right we can see how it printed out. Now take a look at what I had to do to get the printout looking more like the on-screen original:

as you can see there's now more definition and variation in the printed texture and all it took was a little jiggling of the colours, but on screen it doesn't look quite right anymore. This just one example that really underscores the importance of proofing if you're making something that people are going to need to print out. It's also important to be mindful of the look of the end result. When I'm making a texture I have to remind myself that even when the product is 'done' on my end, it still needs to be printed out, so that's what I need to be designing for.