Drawing the Undead!

I recently was contracted to illustrate a story for a British horror magazine. The style is referred to as "picto-fiction;" a full page illustration has blocks of text arranged on it. It's sort of a stepping stone between comics and illustrated magazine fiction. William Gaines of EC Comics fame is generally credited with the inception of the form in the Fifties, as a way to show that comics could be literature. Will Eisner took the concept further in his "Contract With God" and other graphic novels. "Graphic novel" was Eisner's term to try to elevate comics out of the perceived realm of children's entertainment into a more mature form of illustrated reading. The term has since been co-opted by most comics publishers to now include reprints of longer story arcs from their regular monthly publications instead of stand-alone projects.

But I digress! The point of this post was to share some designs for the Undead. I get to draw zombies!

When the pages are done I'll post some of them, but not likely before the magazine is out. Sorry, I don't have a date for that.

Creepy Hallowe'en Tidings

As promised, another Hallowe'en themed illustration.

This is disappointing, the colour washed out considerably when I uploaded it here; have to figure that one out...

Trick or Treat

It's that time of year again - creepies and crawlies and things that go bump! in the night. Thought I'd have a little fun with a Hallowe'en "good girl" style of pin-up, so I started doodling in my sketchbook the other night, while waiting for friends at a pub. I was looking for cute, and seductive, and a little spooky - this was the result.

Next day I redrew the concept on 9" x 12" plate Bristol, roughing out with a Col-Erase Light Blue pencil #20068.  It's not the one they call non-repro; I find this one nicer to draw with, and any leftovers after inking don't seem to scan. I tidied up the drawing with a B pencil and got to inking. (Sorry, no scan of the final pencil)

I love using a brush to ink. I've tried to use markers like some of the well known comics guys do, but I can't get the liquid line look I like. So the inking is mostly witha #2 sable watercolour brush, Hunt #108 dip pen, the really flexible one, and the occasional bit of fine marker to touch up. And yes, some white-out here and there to clean up a couple of poor decisions.

I scanned the final black and white artwork and opened it in Manga Studio5. This is superb software for any kind of comics or illustration work, and I love the feel of the natural media brushes. I've tried Photoshop and Corel Painter, and I'm much happier with MS. This was coloured on several different layers, seperating the background, skin, hair, clothes and jack-o'-lantern as individual elements, with the black and white line work on top. The glow from Jack was added on another layer on top of the line work. I also changed the canvas size eventually, to allow for the lettering, which was done in CorelDraw.

I have a couple of other Hallowe'en-themed pieces on the go, so keep an eye out - they will be along soon!

Flechette

One of the areas I'd really like to break into as an illustrator is the collectible card games market. Some of the ilustration I've seen there is outstanding, much of it strictly digital. This sample is a mix of traditional and digital. The drawing was done with ink on bristol, then scanned and coloured in Manga Studio. I am really impressed with the MS brush engine; the oil brushes are great, and I still need to play more with the watercolour brushes.

Sweet Violet

As you've seen in some previous posts, I have been spending a chunk of my time learning about producing digital illustration. Here's a piece that is a little more cartoony than most of what I've been doing recently, produced in SketchBook Pro and Manga Studio 5. A lot of the tutorials and work I've looked at have been by Paris Christou at ToonBox Studio. He has also been very generous with his time in replying to email questions, and this piece is a little bit of an homage to his "Cherry" character. I've named this svelte little sprite Sweet Violet.

When I work on paper I often begin with a blue pencil sketch, and clean up on top of that. This system seems to work for me digitally, as well. I had a sort of Tinkerbell character in mind when began this scribble. She seems to be having a little bit of a wardrobe malfunction...

 Now I need to be a little more focused on expression and body language, clean up some of the details a little and give the whole drawing some character.

 Now to make it more like a traditional pencil drawing by drawing over the layout with black on a new layer, cleaning and tightening up as I go. While my inclination is usually to go for a more "inked" look with my comics and cartoons, this is more like the final pencils for an animation frame. I have to admit, I haven't got a feel yet for digital inking, but this pencil look is not bad.

 Now I can create layers beneath the drawing layer to begin colouring. The lowest layer is simply filled with a neutral midtone. This is a carry-over from painting - it's easier to judge lights and darks against a midtone than againt the blank white of the canvas (or LCD screen.) These are the basic flat colours for Violet; I can add shadow and highlight later, if I want to get that carried away.

 In the end I opted to keep to flat colour. The outlines have all been coloured with a darker version of the colour they surround, to enhance the animation cel look. The background was painted digitally (and very roughly) in a separate document and imported, then made slightly transparent just to push it back a bit, lessening the intensity of the colours. The wings were coloured on their own layer, and again the transparency was adjusted to make them translucent.

I'm reasonably pleased with Sweet Violet - maybe we'll see more of her in the future. Cheers!

Nice and Naughty

I've been playing with Manga Studio Debut 4, because I'd heard very good reports about it. This program is specifically designed for digital comics production, from blue line sketch and page layout to finished colour and lettering. On the whole, I'm quite impressed. The drawing and inking tools are outstanding! The final inked look has a very traditional pen and brush look. The colouring tools left me a bit cold, but I understand that MS 5 has incorporated a lot of the variety from MS ex4, the more expensive pro version of the program. These include more traditional painting looks, like watercolour, oils and pastel. That's very promising.

So here you go, a Christmasy pin-up, all digital. Enjoy your holidays, and I'll be back in the New Year.

Basics of the Human Head

I promised a couple of weeks ago to post some guidelines on drawing the head. First of all, these are guidelines only, broad generalizations about the structure of the head and face. The basic proportions are a great starting place, but it is the tiny changes in those proportions, the little differences in the relationships between the features and their placement on the face, that creates the individual portrait. Always be observant of your subject.

My approach to drawing the head and face owes a great deal to the teachings and drawings of the mid-twentieth century American illustrator Andrew Loomis. I highly recommend his books as studio resources. Other influences, for a large part, come from comic books and strips, artists like Alex Raymond, Stan Drake, Al Williamson, Neal Adams and many others.

Many sources begin with, "start with an oval, or egg shape." That's not a bad suggestion, but what sort of oval are we looking for? We need to be a little more specific. I think we need, as so many cartoonists say, to start with a circle.

This is where the mental process starts to get a little odd; we will be working on producing a two-dimensional image, but much of our thinking has to be in three dimensions. Draw flat, but think in the round. We want to think of this circle as a sphere, perhaps more specifically as a globe. The globe spins on an axis and has an equator around the middle. We also need a line of "longitude" that will become the centre line of the face. Mark a point on the centre line halfway between the north pole and the equator.

 

The sides of our globe need to be somewhat flattened, so we slice a bit off either side. These cuts are a little bit angled from top to bottom and from front to back. the centre line is extended straight down from the equator, parallel to the axis, as if you were hanging a plumb line from the north pole. Mark the centre line with divisions equal to the length between the equator and the top mark on the centre line. The first mark below the equator is roughly the bottom level of the nose, and the second mark will be the bottom of the chin. A line halfway bewteen the chin and the top of the head will mark the level of the eyes. The equator will become the brow line, and the top mark indicates the edge of the hair line. A line about one third of the way down between the nose and chin indicates the mouth.

 

Some more very general proportions: the width of the eyes is approximately one fifth of the width across the eye line, with about one eye's width between the eyes. The nose is about one eye wide; the mouth is about as wide as the space between the centres of the eyes; the ears might fit neatly in the part of the original circle that were cut off - the tops are about level with the brow, and the bottom of the lobes about level with the base of the nose. The angle of the jaw is about level with the mouth line.

In profile, the jaw begins at the halfway point and sweeps down and forward; the ear begins at the half and curves back. The head in profile fits pretty well in a square; this means you might have to add just a sliver more mass to the back of the skull to lengthen the original circle a little. The hair sits on top of and surrounds the skull; it has shape and mass of its own.

The advantage of thinking about the "globe" first is that it allows to fairly easily draw the head in any position, from any angle. But remember, these are only guidelines and generalities; it will always be to your advantage if you draw from life. The more practice you get from observing how the head is constructed, the more visual information you will be storing for future reference.

The Grid

One of the biggest challenges for artists is the accurate transfer of a drawing to the painting surface, especially if the process involves enlarging or shrinking the image. But take heart, there is a time-tested tool to assist you - the grid.

This technique has been used by artists for centuries, and it's very straightforward. Create a grid over your original image, create a second, matching grid, on your transfer surface, and match the intersection points.

There is one aspect of this technique that must be kept in mind, and is very important. To make an accurate transfer, your original and transfer must be in the same proportions! Here is why:

This drawing of a bowl of apples has a grid placed over it; the image can conveniently be broken down into a grid of 3 rows by 4 columns of squares. But if I place that 3x4 grid on a differently shaped rectangle, the transfered image will be distorted:

There is an easy way to ensure that your duplicate is in the same proportion as your original. Simply draw a diagonal line from corner to corner of your original, and extend the line beyond its border. Any rectangle that you can make with the corner on the same diagonal line will be in the same proportion as the original.

These three rectangles are all the same proportion.

The square grid above is only one possibility. Any regular, easily reproduced grid will work. The rest of this tutorial will use another grid shape, one of crosses, sometimes called the Union Jack. To make this grid, start by drawing diagonal lines from corner to corner; this will always give you the centre point of the rectangle. Carefully measure to find the mid-points of the sides, or use a T-square and set sqares to draw right-angle lines through the centre point. Then join the midpoints diagonally as well. You should end up with this pattern:

When you draw the grid on your original, you might consider placing a sheet of tracing paper or acetate on your drawing or photo first. If you are copying a photo, perhaps place it in a plastic page protector and draw your grid on that. My example uses a coloured line grid to show up against the colour of the photo; I found that black lines disappeared into some of the dark shadows.

Next, look for the places where the edges of the objects (or the lines of your drawing) intersect with the grid. I have marked a number of them here:

 

Begin to transfer these intersection points to your copy grid. This is all about proportion; does this point fall about a third of the way along this line, is this line half the length of that one? Be thoughtful about this. Although this is a mechanical transfer technique, your must still give careful consideration to your placement of these points.

Here, I've started placing my points. You can already see the beginnings of the shape of the pitcher. From here on, it becomes a little bit of connect-the-dots, and a lot of careful consideration of the directions, angles and curves of the lines you are copying.

Here is the rough beginnings of the layout. There are some inaccuracies, but those will be smoothed out in the finish.

This is the final rough layout of the transfer, but I wouldn't consider it a finished drawing. If you were doing an oil or acrylic painting, this probably has enough information for you to begin. Be careful if you want to do this for watercolour - make sure you use a soft pencil and draw very lightly, so as not to damage the surface of the paper, especially when you erase the grid. Be gentle. If you were planning on a fully rendered drawing, now is the time to erase the grid and refine your shapes further and begin adding your values.