Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

reference

9 Ways to Draw Comics Expressions

by Leave a Comment

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!

Sign up for my FREE 7-day Comics Crash Course

Why daily sketching doesn’t work

by 11 Comments

Woodsman_COLORYou know how important it is to draw every day, if you want to improve as an artist. But more importantly, you need to keep a forward momentum and draw the hard stuff.

A lot of artists share daily sketches on Twitter and Facebook. While that’s a perfectly valid thing to do, I see one common problem with most of these sketches – they are all very good! The problem here is that the artist has sat down with a blank piece of paper and drew whatever he felt like, whatever image he had in his mind.

Let’s imagine you were to do the same. Wonder what image would pop up?

I’ll take a wild guess: Character shot.

Whether it’s a macho superhero, a funny animal or a sexy robot, the problem with that image is exactly that it came from inside your head. And let’s face it: not much new comes from inside your head.

I used to only draw muscular guys with swords and dragons. While I did get slightly better at drawing guys with swords and dragons, this daily exercise didn’t help me get better at drawing. Not by a long shot.

What DID make me better, was being forced to draw stuff I didn’t already know how to draw, the “boring” stuff like flowers in a vase, and the hard stuff, like a street full of houses and cars and trees and people .

Unless you push yourself and draw from life, study and copy from photo reference and other artwork, you’ll only be maintaining your drawing muscle, not improving it. When it’s really hard and frustrating – THAT’S when you’re on your way to getting better.

Imagination is overrated. You need input to produce output – even original, fresh and innovative output!

Sketching daily only works if you push yourself to draw the stuff you can’t.

Making Comics with Patrick Yurick – Comics for Beginners Podcast episode

by Leave a Comment


“I find that art is 90 percent fear!”

Artist, teacher and CEO of MakingComics.com, Patrick Yurick, visited Copenhagen and I got to show him the better parts of the city. We also managed to record a podcast on his view on the craft, career, his experiences with teaching comics to teens, his zombie buddy comedy Hipster Picnic and the future of making comics.

Links to stuff mentioned on this episode:

My video on lessons I learned from working on Thomas Alsop

GutterTalk podcast interview

ThomasAlsop.com

Webcomics Underdogs

TheHeadComic.Com

@patrickyurick

MakingComics.com

StoryForgeProductions.com

Patrick-Yurick-in-Copenhagen
CEO of MakingComics.com Patrick Yurick (left) hanging out in Copenhagen with Palle Schmidt.

Video: Lessons from Thomas Alsop

by 7 Comments

I’ve just finished my work on the monthly book from BOOM!, Thomas Alsop. This video is about some of the lessons I learned working on that book – hopefully there is some value in it for you too!

My Top 5 Pet Peeves In Comics

by 8 Comments

There are 5 things in comics that drive me nuts!
There are 5 things in comics that drive me absolutely nuts!

Comics is a wonderfully diverse medium and there is no one right way of doing it. But I have a few things I find just plain wrong!

1: Word balloons that come directly out of people’s mouths.

I’ve noticed this a lot in independent comics. It looks like someone is blowing smoke or bubble gum, and that really ruins the reading experience for me.

2:  That hair.

A couple of loose strands of hair is generally a good idea. But for the slicked back hair to stay slicked, it’s probably a lot longer than the lock in front here. Did the hairstylist make a blunder? What? It doesn’t make sense. Yet I see this hair in A LOT of comics.

3: Talking during a fight.

Come on, really? I’ve never been in a fight, but I’m pretty sure I would be focused on not getting killed rather than what my next snappy comeback line would be. Long and clever dialogue during a fight scene is unbeliavable and takes the danger out of the scene.

4: Balloon shaped breasts.

How many women do you know who have breast that are completely circular? Not only is it anatomically incorrect, is also gives me the impression the artist is a 12-year old boy who is afraid to even Google for reference. I’m SURE there are pictures of real breasts out there.

5: Evil, evil, evil-doers.

I happen to believe people do things for a reason. Going up against the law or a team of superheroes takes a lot of nerve and effort. I don’t believe anybody would risk their lives doing evil, unless they had a clear motive – however faulty and twisted that motive may be! – or no other option. At least try to come of with a reasoning behind the bad guy’s evil plans to take over the world.

But hey, these are just my personal pet peeves. What are yours?

Digital vs. drawing on paper

by 52 Comments

digital-vs-paper-drawing

Everything seems to be moving towards going digital – even making comics. But are you ready to make the jump?

While the digital possibilities are vast and very tempting, I still see advantages in the oldschool method of drawing on paper. Here is a list of pros and cons as I see it.

Pros of going digital:

No scanning.

Since you’re drawing your art directly in the computer, there is less hassle scanning and cleaning up your original artwork.

Possibilities

Being able to move and scale ANYTHING, including reference pictures, sketches and word balloons is definetely an upside. With a CINTIQ , you can even draw directly on the pressure sensitive screen (which also turns for maximum line control) and you have everything in one place.

Undo

Am I the only one who sometimes find myself searching for the “undo” button, when I’m drawing on paper? Granted, the so called “lucky accidents” that come from working with a pen or a brush can be a pro as well, but more often than not, you end up with plain old UNlucky accidents – and correcting is a lot easier to do digitally (and with nicer result).

Speed?

It seems for some artists, the possibilities of going digital also offers more speed and momentum to their work. They are simply able to get to a nice result faster. Used efficiently, digital saves you a ton of time.

Cons of going digital:

Speed?

In my experience, any task I take to the computer takes double the time. You can zoom in way too much and nitpick details. You’re working on a device that also has Facebook, Twitter and a gazillion other things running at the same time. I believe “PC” stands for “Procrastination Central”. And the speed of your work depends on the speed of your computer, your software, your file size and all sorts of other fun factors which you have little control over.

Price

You can work digitally with just a computer and a Wacom tablet. But if you really want to go all in, with all the advantages a Cintiq has to offer, get ready to throw almost two thousand dollars on the table. Ouch! You better be sure you can make that money back. Remember though, that equipment you use for your business is usually tax deductable (depending on where you live).

Updates and breakdowns

When has a piece of paper ever asked for an update, or asked for you to plug in the power cord? The reliability on hardware and software is slightly scary (at least for me) because those things can go flaky on you with no warning.

Low mobility

This is a big issue for me. I like being able to sit with a sketchbook or work out of the house for a day. If I had a digital setup, it would most likely be at my studio and too bulky to bring anywhere. However, Wacom has put out a 13.3″ Cintiq  that is really lightweight and portable – But you still need to hook it up to a computer to work on it.

Back up

A piece of Bristol board doesn’t suddenly crash on you and leave you to have to reconstruct hours of work. Unless you spill coffee all over your original art, it will usually outlive any computer. And if you scan it in, you have a digital backup as well, a lot safer than having just one file.

No original artwork!

Having drawn it all on the computer, you have no originals to sell at conventions or exhibit at your local library or whatever. Sure, you can make nice printouts, but that’s just not the same, is it? Note that this con could be a pro, since you don’t need storage space for your original art! You can put it all in your Dropbox or on a portable harddisk.

So, what’s the conclusion?

Given the price, low mobility and given the fact that I don’t have the time for the learning curve that going all digital will require (at least before the result is anywhere near what I can produce with pen and paper), I don’t see myself going digital anyt time soon. And I don’t like having to rely on power and technology to be able to make comics.

What do you guys think? Are there any pros or cons I missed? And what do YOU use to make comics? Comment below!

Sign up for my FREE  7-day Comics Crash Course