A Practitioner-Researcher’s Self-Reflective Reflection on the Role of Digital Drawing Tools Used for Comics-Based Research: Characterisation, Concealment, and Transculturality

This presentation reflects on the complex role of digital drawing tools — specifically Adobe Photoshop and Procreate — within my practice-led, comics-based research. Using comics-making as methods, I investigate how stylistic constructions operate and intersect across different graphic storytelling cultures. I propose that digital drawing tools function not only as technical supports, but as active agents that shape research methods and influence the practitioner-researcher's conceptual stance. Despite their relevance, this methodological dimension remains underexplored in the expanding field of comics-based research (Kuttner, et al., 2018; 2020). My aim is not to resolve this gap, but to offer practice-rooted reflections that invite further discussion. I approach this through three interlinked lenses. First, characterisation: in a research comic I produced (Figure 1), I demonstrate how digital brushes for inking and shading enabled the articulation of two styles — 'manga' and 'McCloudian' — embedding stylistic comparison within the research output itself. Second, concealment: in another project (Figure 2), I incrementally modified an Archie Comics page towards manga-inflected features. Although the transformation is visually evident, the labour behind digital manipulation remains hidden, prompting questions about whether style resides in visible outcomes or in the obscured processes. Third, transculturality: digital drawing tools have helped shift my understanding from discrete, comparable graphic storytelling cultures to Abu-Er-Rub, et al.'s conceptualisation of culture as inherently 'transcultural' — characterised by 'entanglement, exchange' and 'porosity' (2019, p. xxvi). Such tools, I argue, materially facilitate movement across stylistic conventions, enabling contemporary transcultural practice for practitioners and shaping knowledge production for researchers within comics-based scholarship.