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A barista in Portland saw my messy journal and showed me a fix that changed my whole setup
I was sitting in a coffee shop on Hawthorne last Tuesday, flipping through my weekly spread and getting annoyed. The barista walked by, glanced at my page, and said I should try drawing my grids with a pencil first, then going over them with pen after the coffee had a minute to settle. I tried it that night and my lines went from wobbly to actually straight in about 15 minutes. It sounds so dumb but it never crossed my mind to build the layout in two passes. Has anyone else picked up a technique from a total stranger like that?
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ryang778d ago
The "two passes" thing is real but the reason isn't the coffee, it's that you're giving the ink time to dry so your hand doesn't drag through wet lines. Pencil first helps too, sure, but the bigger fix is just slowing down on pass two. I do mine the same way with a ruler and a fine liner, and honestly the pencil part barely matters once you get the feel for it, I've skipped it plenty of times and my grids still come out clean. What actually saved my spreads was drawing the boxes on a separate scrap page first so I'm not wrecking the real one when I mess up. So yeah, cool tip from that barista, just don't give the coffee credit it doesn't deserve lol.
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