Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

Art Tutorial

9 Ways to Draw Comics Expressions

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I’ve previously written about the benefits of using a mirror to learn how to draw gestures. But maybe you don’t have the same rubber face that I do. So I put together a little tutorial / study of different facial expressions to use as a reference. Enjoy!

Angry

I imagined myself as an old-school drill instructor yelling at his troops. Notice the wrinkles above and across the nose and the downturned corners of the mouth, even though it is wide open.

Bored

Admittedly this is a pretty exaggareted face I’m making. But notice the raised eybrows and the half-closed eyelids.

Surprised

Notice the wide eyes, raised eyebrows and the way the head is tilted back (creating double chins) almost like it’s trying to get away from whatever just popped up.

Whoa, dude!

This is sort of the same as surprised only more enthusiastic. I imagined myself as a teenager watching another kid do a cool skateboard trick.

Puzzled

Here’s a guy trying to solve a difficult problem, unaware that anyone is watching him. Note that one eyebrow is up and the other is down – a great way to show conflicting emotions. In this case intrigue and frustration.

Who cares?

Again an example of one eyebrow up / one down. Also note the half closed eyelids. This is a variation of bored, but with an audience and showing off an element of cockiness (Hence the crooked smile). This guy wants you to know he is not impressed.

Sulky

A very childish face. Protruding lower lip and forehead makes like the person is thinking; SO unfair I have to clean my room!

Smarmy

Put a Clark Gable moustache on this guy and he’s a self-loving aristocrat or swashbuckler. Notice the upward-turned eyebrows towards the middle, that combined with the smile gives a very smug expression.

Silly

I don’t know when you would ever need to make this face, but I threw it in here in case you ever have to draw a really annoying clown type character. Notice the double chins and stupid grin complete with tongue out that gives away the fact that this guy knows he’s being silly.

In summary, there is a lot of way to vary facial expressions, even within the same emotion (happily surprised vs. shocked). There is a difference in how you would look in private and how you would play to an audience (nobody makes a smarmy face when they’re alone). You can of course experiment with making faces yourself and noticing the wrinkes and changes in expressions. There is a lot more to it than smiley-face emojis!

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Bonus Video: How to Paint with White Gouache on Black Board

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Sometimes negative thinking is a good idea! Especially if you’re designing a very dark piece of art, focusing on the highlights rather than blacks can be useful.

In this little video I demonstrate how I transform a black piece of board into a cover for a novel (my own!).

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Art tutorial: 5 hacks for drawing backgrounds quicker

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Do you have to draw backgrounds on every panel? The short answer is no. If you start with a good establishing shot and learn these 5 hacks, you can get away with very little background drawing!

1: Structure

If you place your characters against a wall or another big surface (like the sky!), a few rightly placed lines will give the illusion that we’re still in the place you showed us in the establishing shot (usually a wide shot in the first frame to establish the room or setting we are in, who is present, where the door is, stuff like that).structure-background

2: Silhouette

The outline of whatever is behind your characters can be quite enough – and a LOT quicker to draw! So if the scene takes place in a living room, just black out the shape of the lamp and a couch, if it takes place in the woods, black out tree trunks and leaves.

Pro tip: If you let elements poke in from the sides it lets us know there is more outside the frame. It’s a cheap trick but it works every time! Hint or show part of an object or shape and our minds will fill out the rest.

silhouette-background

3: Shadow

Some shadows – from a window, a tree or other objects nearby – is a great way of showing us what is outside the frame while avoiding to draw it all together. Don’t try to think realistically of where the light would be coming from or how the perspective would look, just treat it as a nice shape to liven up your drawing.

shadow-background

4: Gradient

A color gradient – or in this case just a grayscale one – can sometimes make it out for an actual background. It’s perhaps not the most sophisticated solution, but it makes the character “pop” and that’s often all you need.

gradient-background

5:  Riff

A “riff” is a graphic shortcut. Every artist has her own. Sometimes a riff is just some shapes/lines, not a realistic rendering of anything. Make your own riff or copy from another artist whose style resembles yours. I think I lifted this one from Mike Mignola, a brilliant background artist to steal from – because he rarely draws much and has a superb sense of graphic storytelling.

riff-background

Again, you need some background, at least in one or two frames per page, so the readers know where the characters are. But once you’ve established the world around your characters, it’s OK to cheat a little on the rest of the page. And now you know how!

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If you want to know more about background drawing and perspective, check out this episode of the Comics for Beginners course.