Getting started drawing...

jill_valentine

Basically, I want to be able to draw my own comics. (Unique I know...:D ) I'm actually not awful, but because I'm a girl, drawing, (Much less comic style drawing...) was never really encouraged. I've decided to take it up again, but was wondering what books, videos, etc, you guys might recommend to polish it a bit. I know everybody has their own style, but theres no harm in seeking advice. All the books I've looked at lean towards costumed superheroes or comic-ha-ha style drawing, where as I'm looking for something a little bit dirtier and meaner....

Any ideas?

][cEMAN**

Well you could pick up a copy of "previews". It covers all of the mainstream publishers as well as independant ones. They do pictures of the covers and of some of the inside pages. Check those out and see if there are any styles in there that you like. Then check out the artist on that book and look at some of their other stuff. If it's exactly what you want then mimic their stuff till you develop your own style out of it.

If you find a hybrid of different people's styles then work on that. Don't just start by trying to do an entire strip.

What a lot of artists tend to do is creature models of the characters they want to draw so they can get a realistic 3D view of it. Again looking back to my previous comment about finding a favourite artist, if they have done a book which has brought out models of the characters which are spot on, you could buy one or two of these and use them as a reference point for creating a model for your characters. Use the different angles to draw in the way you want to.

And again i'll say this - get a sketch pad and just draw different things like body parts, facial expressions, angles, shadows, body positions etc. Then go back to your sketch pad any time you think "Hmmm I need to draw <insert idea> and i've done this before". Look back to your sketch pad and look at the different ways you've drawn said idea and then go with the one that's worked best before.

After a while you won't need the model or the sketch pad to put pen to paper.

jill_valentine

Is it just me or are women a particular pain in the ass to draw?:D

simu

Originally posted by jill_valentine
Is it just me or are women a particular pain in the ass to draw?:D

I'm the opposite - when I draw men they look like blocks or women with beards to suggest maleness.

I guess you just have to practise or get photos of people in different poses to copy.

monkeymagic

draw everything and draw quickly to losen up your hand, then when you're sick and tired of drawing everything from life start stylising your drawings. NEVER copy an artist you like, the best artists all stand out like a sore thumb because tehy use their own style and please for the love of god if you're going to draw don't make it look like Alan Davis, mark bagely or Mike McKone, all three are wanted for crimes against the eyeballs.

Kold

Drawing men is a lot easier. I always have to women's jawlines about 3 times before it looks pretty enough.

Fysh

When I first started drawing, my brother got me a copy of Stan Lee and John Buscema's "How to draw comics the marvel way". Now, godawful as it may be (and I certainly wouldn't leap to its defence) it provided me with a handy starting point. Guidelines on various factors are covered in its various chapters, and if you really hate the Marvel version there's a ripoff which has the exact same ideas only the sample art doesn't feature Marvel Heroes and it's not written by someone hugely famous.

I'd say either one is worth picking up, purely because it gives you somewhere to start. There's a lot of superhero crap in there which is annoying (I lost count of the number of times Stan tells us to make sure all the male characters look ridiculously huge, and how the women have to be gorgeous because "that's the marvel way"...bloody fascist), but there's also some useful info.

I have to disagree totally with monkeymagic - if you liek an artist, copy them until you're sick of the sight of their work. Then, when you've worked out a way of doing what they do, try and find a way of incorporating the bits you like into your own style of drawing. The only way to find your own style is to learn several others, and then build one you're comfortable with.

Personally, I find women bloody difficult to draw as opposed to blokes, but that may well be because the first couple of years of trying to draw consisted of me drawing lots of strangely garbed ninjas (many of whom kept getting incorrectly referred to as Ninja Turtles by my clearly sight-deficient friends at the time) doing inventively horrible things to non-ninja (and therefore clearly inferior) blokes.

Cable

I agree with Fysh, when i first started darwing I used to try and copy some stuff by a few artists that worked with Marvel and WhiteWolf, but never a direct copy, I always tried changing some element. Start with small changes and you'l start to notice your own style in your copies, thats when you'l have your style and be able to start darwing your own. Just be careful not to stay with the ideas/style of your target artist, otherwise you'l never get your full potential on paper.