Drawing Comic Style Faces Using Traditional Art Supplies

1. Intro to Draw Comic Art Faces: love one. Welcome back. My name is Robert Marcelo and this in my class on drawing comic style faces using traditional art supplies in this class, I'm gonna guide you through my process for drawing comic art. We're gonna first start with the tools that we use, talk about the paper, the pencils and get you everything that you need to get rolling. And then from there we're going to sketch out these characters in a step by step fashion. I want to show you how to use basic primitive shapes and how to build upon that. And then finally, how to render over Top that and apply your own style. I really feel that if you work in this fashion, it lends to a more creative, expressive way of creating your characters. And ultimately it's just more fun. So the 1st 2 are gonna be in real time and in the last example is gonna be a time lapse with narration. And we're just going to kind of recap on everything that we discussed in this class, so I'd be super excited to see what you come up with. So for your project file, feel free to copy these characters or be inventive and come up with your own. I'm sure all the other students would love to see it as well. So as always, keep drawn, keep having fun and I'll talk to you soon. 2. The Tools of The Trade: Welcome back, everyone. Robert here from my home studio comics. So we're gonna be drawing with some traditional art supplies today. And I wanted to go ahead and go through these with you. Eso The first thing that we're gonna dio is talk about the paper itself. So this is Bristol board smooth. You really don't have to use this. This is made by blue line. There's lots of different manufacturers. So this is ah, blue line product. But it's a great Bristol board. Smooth, not a vellum. So vellum is gonna be a little bit more rough and have a bit more tooth and smooth is gonna be just a nice, smooth surface. Makes a big difference in line clarity. So wanted Teoh show you that. And then for pencils we're gonna be using I'm gonna be using your welcome. Use whatever you like. I'm gonna be using a graph gear 500. It is a 5000.5 made by Penn Tower is a technical pencil with a HB light which a little bit darker on that I'm gonna be using A I think this is a Mars state lor from same it right, Stadler. But it's basically a two millimeter lead holder and this is a lighter let at 28 So just remember that when you see the h is it means hardness and the higher the number goes up, the heart of the leg gets. Therefore, the lighter the mark making when they have bees associated with him, everything from H B. And then the numbers go up to be three be things like that, then it means black, and it's gonna be a darker lead, which is gonna be a little bit more prone to smudging as well. Have to be aware that especially if you're using something like he needed a racer, which I like to use to soften up the pencil strokes our marks. Then basically, these have to be a little bit cleaner and you gotta be careful, cause darker lead will therefore smudge and start to, you know, dirty up your page of it. Another type of a racer. I like to use this mainly because it's clickable. It's fast to get mawr as I need it. Same thing for the technical pencil. You know, these you have to sharp and keep in mind you have to sharpen these with this type of ah sharpener. So you actually put these in there? You start to rotate around that kind of sometimes catch up first, and then as you start to smoke through it, it'll go faster. And yes, so these air the way you're gonna get a nice sharp point there. You also can use a little bit of sandpaper. There's different sanding blocks, your pencils and then finally, I'll use, like, a big you know, Magic Rubber Racer. Prisma color makes good one. That's what I got here, obviously. So these air good for large areas on Ben, the final eraser that I always seem to forget to mention. But I just thought about it. I love these little guys in the back of the technical pencils. Another reason why I still gravitate towards using these, because a lot of artists do. Comics will just use a couple of these, but again, you can use anything. There's not a right or wrong scenario here, but I wanted you to be aware of the supplies that I'm using so that you feel like you could get similar results. But remember, too, that it's utilizing these products for quite a long time. been drawn over 20 years for just comic art. So what happens is you get used to using different supplies and different even with digital digital brushes. Certain things you just get a feel for and then you start to streamline through it a bit more So those are the products we're gonna be using for these videos. So let's progress on to the next lesson and start to do some drawing. 3. Sketching with Basic Forms: Okay, so let's jump into our first example here. And so what I want to do is first start off with the harder lead. I'll do most of it with this, really. But I just used the softer 0.5 for a bit of darker lines, so generally more on overall page work and things like that. But what I want to do here is this first start with a few basic shapes. So you know something like a circle to get started, almost always a circle. But unless you're doing a really boxing character, I was thinking for this character is somebody a little bit, you know, like a tough guy and look or whatever so a little bit more of a square jaw character. But you started this circle. You can add a you know, a square. And let's just keep it real basic to get you started. And I'm actually gonna angle this character just a little bit, so it doesn't need to be entirely forward facing. But you still start with this box circle, and then a bit of a wedge shape. You could probably see another square for the the chin or an oval now the main reason why you see me starting a very angular I want to talk about utilizing angles and curves together to get a nice feeling to work. A nice stylization now, not falling prey to the concept of all of one or all of the other. It's It's a nice mix in the way that you use them that will give you a little bit more stylized fields your characters. So just like that, we got a very basic head shape. Now, if you want to know more detailed approach like the Andrew Loomis method, I've got other lessons on that you can have is to check out. But for this case, I'm just gonna quickly place a line for the brown, a mark for the nose, and then I'm thinking, kind of a grimace or snarl or something. So one one lip up so we'll start off with a very basic shape there, a little bit of the bottom teeth bottom. What may be startled up. Learn, you know, bending up a little bit, something like that. So just a slanted shape was simple. Five. Aseem further just be kind of ah, triangular shape. Eso just like that now replacing the generally when I put a line across this is the brown out the eyes. I feel like the brow needs to be oppa little bit more eyebrows. So I'm just gonna put too little slanted lines like this. Lots of ways you could do this. You can find the center line of the face and you can draw in circles. No news. And you can kind of feel out the indentation of the face. Not a bad way to do it. They're just remember, the ear is going to give you generally the position of the brow, my bro's and the nose case. What kind of lines up like that doesn't need to always be that way with your stylized characters, obviously, because you're gonna really stretch these proportions. But it's good to have the basic ideas in place, then stylized through it and over it. So just like that, got a basic construction of character probably gonna see the ear. It's not that far of a tilt. Remember, the ears do tilt outward, so don't get in the habit of drawing your ears straight up and down like this. It's more a little bit more along the lines of of this. So let's see. Just like that, we can figure out the eyes kind of dropped those everyone just some eye openings here. Now, another thing you might do is draw the actual eyeballs. I see a lot of artists to that. Not a bad idea, because again, what you're trying to do is feel out these shapes. This is very much, uh, the sketching process is very much just, you know, um, tryingto give you something to guide you in the next few steps. So you want to put in a lot of like, light line making, and you want to move these lines around. You want to feel out these shapes. That's why you see me scribbling and going over like this cheekbone. I could easily went in there and said, What? The cheekbone to be here and here and put a really dark hard line. But then it commits me to that idea a little too early, especially because I know often struggle a cemetery. So what I'm doing is finding these shapes are moving this out of this pencil lead around, and I'm basically just maneuvering and trying to figure out what I want to see here. Shape of the nose. Now the nose could be again. And you know, Noval a rectangle up here are more of a pyramid. Really wanted to tape her, but it's pretty simple. It's, you know, it's at least at this point, you know, I guess the nose isn't simple. It gets kind of complex by time you refine it, but it doesn't need to be. You know, the other thing we want to think about when drawing comic style heads and faces like this is that we want to simplify as much as possible. We want to let the style kind of show through and, uh, so allow things to be, you know, interpret and interpreted in different ways by the viewer. I guess so. You don't need to draw everything in hyper realistic focus. And I think a lot of times that will that will kill the expressiveness of whatever it is you're doing eso for this type of our I try to think a little bit more caricature style, Uh, when doing this so along myself to, uh, have fun with it a bit more and change change things quite dramatically. If need be, even the hair style, this character I want to go. And given this weird kind of Mohawk No, I probably wouldn't draw too many characters with Mohawks, but for comics it's kind of fun, and I might even go a little bit more stylized with the way that I draw the hair for this example. So again, really, lending too expressive interpretation of what I want to see here also might give him some other little character details. Like maybe a scar over the eye are, you know, face tattoo or, you know, just some kind of thing to make him look different from all the other characters. Which good luck, because so much has been done, is as I started to do that, I start to think about other characters that it already looks like. But but just try to have fun with it. Obviously, we could throw in facial hair. We could do all sorts of things there as well, wrinkles. You know, if we wanna age the character and let's just having looking off camera a little bit, we'll start with some very tiny pupils there. And just like that, we've got a very rough starting point. So, um, we're definitely gonna take this a lot further and refine. It looks pretty crude at this point, but that's the point. So allow yourself to make these lights sketch marks. You're trying to find ideas here. It's not that you always going toe every concept with everything mapped out in your mind. Okay, I think that's a sure fire way to kind of stress yourself. I won't make you think that you're not as good as you could be or something. It's the sketching processes. Ah, exploratory process. Eso with that. Let's stop right here. We'll head over to the next lesson and refine this sketch. 4. Adding in the Details to Our Concept: All right. So no. And this Ah lesson. We're going to softer races and hopefully make sense of this messy face. Someone stretch out my needed a racer. This is how you clean it. They last a pretty good deal. Amount of time. This is a prison color, by the way. So I just want a glance across this whole thing. I don't want to get rid of all the information, but it definitely want to push all that back so that I can now try Teoh grab only the parts that I want to see him this design and bring it forward. So there's a little bit that I feel like I should have still added So one of the things that I think about when doing this stage is almost like I'm drawing with shadows. Because if I think about lines too much, if I just place lines everywhere, I tend to not get a very expressive feeling that I'm looking for us. I want to put like little shadows on the sides of the eyes so it feels more rounded of a shape. I want to just draw with heavier lines in general again, I almost think of even the lines of shadows, or at least lie in wait so that I get a more fun feel to the way I do it. If I put these thin lines everywhere, I just feel like it loses. It loses a lot. It doesn't have nearly the solid feel on the page. And that's where a pencil like this is nice, because you can get thinner lines by bringing it more upright. And by tilting it, you can get more your shadows. So it just kind of helps. I also want to bring the scowl down more, so I want to lower these eyebrows like this. So again, I just want to pay attention that I'm not staying identical to the underlying structure there. I'm just using that to get me to the next. The next stage often hear me saying my lessons that I feel like, uh, when you're doing this type, are any art really? It's like a relay race. They're basically just giving yourself the next handoff in the each stage of the work. I think that helps you feel a little bit better about it because you're not looking at it like every step has to be perfection. Every step has to catapult you to some finish. You know, it's not about finishing it. Um, as much as it's about making sure that each time you add to the artwork, you ah, you develop it further. You make something that you're, you know, a little bit more proud off a little bit closer to the goal. So again, just kind of moving these shapes around, moving these lines around. You see, I brought that, uh, highbrow and way further, So sometimes little changes like that can be pretty significant. So I think another thing that you want to watch out for when doing this kind of character design is not doing everything the same way that you do every time. So there's, ah, a certain part of it where it feels good to repeat yourself because you build confidence. You say, Well, that's my style. Fronts is that's the way that I do things. Um, so you build, you know, you build a comfort zone around whatever you're doing, and that's fine. But at the same time, if you do that too much, he won't learn new tricks, right? So you have to break out of your comfort zone. It's like right here. Even I'm gonna put a rounded shape there. I'm gonna bring it in more angular, You know, the way it kind of shifts from there just to try it out. It's kind of a word spot to do that, but But I want you to be aware of trying to try, you know, curves, organic shapes with angles to kind of mix it up on, get a feeling of style. So I might bring a really squared off line right here, you know, just intentionally and then, you know, meet down here and get a little bit more of Ah, around it. Ah, chin least with one part, some constantly trying different line variations as I do this again just to have those kind of eureka moments of like I kind of like that. It's something I'm gonna incorporate into my designs for a bit. And each time you do that, you get a little bit closer to what you perceive is being You're correct style. Your you know your way of doing something that you also I think a big part two is like when you share it with people and they go. Whoa! I really like that face. You did are really like that. We did his cape, his hair, you know, And maybe you were thinking that as well. So when they say that it gives you some kind of positive reinforcement that you're on the right track, you know, because it is, it is all about the fans and the viewers. You know, you got to make sure that they like the work. Um, I guess what then? Reason to, though, because you wanna you want to love what you do, and you want to make sure that you're putting out your voice within your work. Um, but there's a certain part. Is an artist you have to be receptive of what other people are seeing with your work, how they identify with it. One of things that we're really opening up to that is working, you know, getting your first professional gig and having to deal with changes, because then you have to let go of that thing. Works like, Well, this is my vision. This is my message that all gets thrown to the side a bit because, you know, you have to work with maybe a team. Get that little scar And there another thing I want to make sure to mention, as I explain these is notice that I intentionally break up the lines, so I'm skipping over lines. OK, I'm doing that intentionally, because if you trace everything all the time, flattens that I don't know, it's something about it. Just it kind of loses some appeal. I think now that could just be my own style choice. But I wanted to make sure toe share it, because it is something that I think about when I do my own work. So allow yourself to use lion brakes. Allow yourself to use different shapes to convey a shadow or on edge. You know, just mix it up again on put little shadows on the sides of the eyes. So hopefully it looks more rounded, another kind of popular way of doing faces like this. Ah, that helps Teoh make the information stand off the page pretty well is to do a heavy line, even if it's awaited line or it could be a non waited line. Just remember when I say waited line, I mean tapered lines. So waited line to me are tapered line is thick. That then a non taper line is just even line all throughout like that. So some people or I would say, a lot of artists. This was in comics. We'll do a heavier line around the perimeter of whatever it is they're doing. Definitely the faces. And then ah, used thinner lines on the interior concepts. You know, the interior forms of the face. The eyes of Malta knows all that. Um so another thing to think about when doing this is kind of your your areas of contrast. So the way to utilize your lines in your shadows defines your focal points. It makes certain things of your character stand out and read better. So it's not just simply getting good at making lines and shadows, shapes or whatever. It's how you implement those in certain areas that will really catapult your work. Um, you start to be a little bit more strategic about it. So again, a real simple interpretation of that is heavier lines on the outside, then your lines on the interior and then go from there. But you're going to use it all sorts of ways. So here at the hair I'm just trying to find a pattern. So the way I do here is I do kind of this zigzag effect. So right now I'm just doing this build up of sketch lines to give myself something to visualize with, and then I'll get in here and I'll place little. It's a shadow in between areas. So this is the part where I picture the recess areas of the hair. I just kind of randomly throwing those in every not so random. I'm tryingto envisioned shapes of the hair because hair has a pretty complex rhythm sometimes, you know, But then on this side, I'm just gonna She ate it in more. So this is kind of that contrast I was talking about. You know, I don't want to do the same pattern throughout, Want to think about some kind of light source. Maybe through here. So just kind of putting that heavier shadow on this side. I could even think about some, you know, some rendering lines, shading that goes that way. Whatever. And this is about the stage will start rendering. You know, I could still drop in more shadows. Like, for instance, I can put, um, some shading off the side of the nose here, every shadow under the cheekbone, this side. I can put a shape, a shadow over here like that. And then I could start rendering. So let's go and do that. We're gonna go ahead and stop right here and head over to the next lesson, and we're just going to render. Some of this will get rid of some more of these construction lines, adding some final touches and some rendering on, See if we can come up with. So with that, let's move on. 5. Additional Rendering to the First Example: Okay, so now, for the final stage of this one will just clean this up a bit more, So get rid of some of these construction lines, and obviously you can soft to race and redo this as many times as you need. Um, there's, ah, a certain area where you're gonna probably lose a little bit of the creative energy to the sketch if you refine too much. But I don't think it's a bad thing to refine even a couple times. A lot of times I will do that, but for the sake of this one, we're gonna kind of tryto get a few different character types on the page here. So what I want to do is you carry this to a level where I feel like I could refine it. Um, my final pass would be inking the work, but in this case, we're just talking about drawing. So we give it to some of those construction lines like that. I'm gonna bring out my my darker lead here. So a lot of times I will, you know, just kind of go through and finalize some of these edges. I still try to sculpt the work a little bit as I do this. So shifting lines here and there I see fit, but I will add in little bits of rendering. So what I mean by rendering is a little bit of ah, final pass to the shading. So I might beef up the eyebrows put like, I like to put these little weird cool points right there. Call that part of my style, I guess, and finalize them shadows but at in just a little bit surrendering to make it, um, a bit more expressive. So that's what I like to do here. I'm wait, uh, roh teeth. This little bit a lot of times are murdering. I start to turn the page. Also, keep in mind if you're like me and you get a bit messy on the work, you can always, um, use another sheet as a writer. Place that under your hand and just put your hand over top there unless you're good at just creating your marks without sitting your hand right down there. But, Aziz, you start to use softer lead. You want to be more aware of this. Well, kind of pick out so many shapes over here, can just kind of render some things. I'll even break up the, uh, the edges a little bit by putting little dots their little marks there. Wondering is always kind of hard to explain, but I just feel like and adds, Ah, bit more style to the end result. My tape for some of the lines like that again, kind of jump in here and finalized in the shadows. I also joining will go around it on the edge into a final pass to the the line weight around the character. That's kind of what you see me doing here at the hair and really give him any irises. So drop in the IRA shapes. It's always find the point of five is nice for getting in my very tiny details. But the two millimeter level still do it just fine, because you can really sharpen those down and get whatever kind of point in detail. You need bones back and forth, but I do like this lad on this lighter lead and even the softer edge it provides as you start to use it more for rendering shadows and for kind of finding shapes. It was just weird how for me the 22 pencils kind of end up meaning different things, you know, along me to do different things with them. Or maybe I just like having options. Adam. Now, the other thing I will say about final rendering stages like this is just plain wrong with , um, putting lines right through, Uh, the character is at times like, um, I think there's like in the beginning, I definitely felt like I was always scared to mess up where I was at. I guess I still feel that little bit. But I know from enough experience now that you just have to kind of fight through that and try new things. I think I have kind of talked about that a little bit already, but a to this stage of the work, it's really important, you know, it's it's one of those things where you're not really gonna mess it up. I mean, I guess you could, but you know, we're still in the pencil stage, so it's not gonna be that big of a mistake. You can always give in here and fix it. But one of the things I like to dio is actually not be afraid Teoh sketch right through the middle of the face and in the supplies. Everything, not just faces, but it provides more texture, and it kind of softens up all these overly rigid forms. So if you stick to everything that's constructed like every, I don't know perimeter detail and everything is on the outside and you're scared to shade a cheekbone or throwing some, you know, little texture lines in the middle right there, then you don't. You don't get as much depth to the face of the character, and we have to remember that faces have a lot of imperfections, a lot of blemishes and things like that. I love styles where they're OK with just like throwing ink splatter all over. I think it's just needed thing not quite that free flowing in my process. But I need to be just adding a little bit of cross, actually want to make sure it's on the camera here, and so what? That just you don't think the 10 lines tapered lines and really, it's just a great Asian trying to break up that solid shadow with a little bit of paper lines, too. So often up that edge this is gonna be about faces. So I'm not gonna go past this point, but usually to throw in some kind of shirt shapers my pat. Okay, so just like that, we've got a character drawn out, and this is probably about as far as I would take it. I mean, I could sit here and keep noodling around and picking apart ways, Dad, and more texture and more dimension to the face, things like that. But this pretty much gives us a good starting point. And then, you know, I could hand this off to an anchor and somebody that's really good thinking. They're gonna know what lines to pick up on. They're going to know what lines to style, eyes, and same thing If I go to think my own work, I need to think about this in a way where I don't just trace what's here that I try to add to it almost like if there was another pair of eyes on this project, So you have to kind of imagine that scenario for yourself. The best way to really get used to that is to ink other people's work, even if you don't want to be an anchor. I still recommend it highly to improve your artwork because you just start to pick up on certain decisions they make when you ink their work. So it's Ah, it's a great learning experience. Let's go and stop right here. We'll jump into another example and let's see what we come up with. 6. Rough Sketching the Next Example: Okay, So for this next example, let's start again with the basic head shape you something about like that. So again, just a circle, but I wouldn't want to do is immediately go for ah, different kind of head shape. So I'm going to draw the sides of the face like best was up a little bit more. I'm a taper the jaw and to a point that I want this to be a female character, so I typically will use appointed Chan. Not nearly as pointed is what I I'm showing you here, but I kind of start there. So even though I skipped past any basic shape making, it's really just a circle tapered lines that are coming in at a downward slope and then appoint to the chin so pretty basic, you could almost say it. This bottom part is a upside down triangle. Eso just kind of use that for a guide, and what I want to do is put an angle slight angle to the face. I think it's just important to not fall in the habit of drawing faces forward facing very often. Really, if you can draw him on an angle, you should be able to draw import facing because it's just practicing these symmetry from left to right. Generally, um, but it's more common that you're gonna need to draw characters on an angle, and there it's to me. It's harder to dio, so I want to practice. What's harder now? What's easier? So something like this and then what I want to do is just kind of define where I think the eyes were gonna be remember to The eyes were generally halfway down from the top of the head to the chin, so obviously that's gonna vary with style and character types. But we're gonna go and say That's a pretty much, uh, given at this point and then when I like to do here is again draw these big ovals for the eyes I cavities, really? And then for the nose. Also, straw Lika of V a little bit of ah, fear another pyramid really are upside down triangle. Just like bad the pyramid come in right here. So for the female characters, I journaling will make the nose a smaller kind of go for a cute, see kind of love. Now the tricky part two is not falling into the habit of always putting the nose right in the middle. Okay, so if the head is even slightly tilted, it's gonna be off to the side a little bit. And it's always gonna be off to the side, even a little bit more, because the nose actually, for most people, not everybody. There's a bend here and kind of an up dealt so again. This doesn't apply to every knows that. I don't think there's an every and every rule to any part of the face or any part of a character, because there's just so many different people and ethnicities, and we're all just very different from one another, right? So, um, but again, you have to think about that. The fact that the nose is coming away from away from the face. So it's, you know, it's extending past the face, right? So if that's occurring and there's an angle, it's gonna be more evident. So just be aware that so now what? The eyes I like to draw a bit of a cheek line like this, and I'd like to think of that is a little bit more of an upward bend. So slight arc there and that will help me. That will guide me as I start to draw the eye openings that I want to see here. Now, for I openings for a female character, I typically will go with, uh, it almost looks like the shape of a bird's head is what I always seem to see. But again, you can't really rely on this too much like you have to look past this when you're shifting the head is your turning head further away from the viewer. This isn't gonna work so much, but for here it's relatively straight on just a slight angle. So I think we can make it work. But the main thing to think about is it. The eyes have a bit of a tilt in the way that you know the side with the tear duct is lower , and then the side that points up in away from the edge of the eye is Charlie higher. So if you were to draw a line through here, there's just a bit of it, an angle quick that doesn't have to be role evident again. It's gonna vary a lot based upon style and character types, but it's something I tend to put into my character designs. I wanna It will street that for you. And I've got one eye significantly smaller. So I gotta keep an eye on that No pun intended and then for valuables. I want this to be a a light hearted emotion or expression, so I'm going to tilt these back a bit. So as we saw it, the first character that downward sloping brow makes him look more upset here. We want something a bit more airy. And then for a smile here, one thing that I see that's a common problem, you know, And I faces in my own work. It is not putting the mouth close enough to the nose. It's closer to the nose, and it is to the chin. So just be aware of that. Um, but as we get this into place here, start with the top lip. The top lip can appear to be a little bit straighter from ah, shot like this, but I'm gonna put a slight tilt upwards. Remember, amusingly stretched out M shapes this middle ones really just a line across this point. Kind of Ah, blocky shape for the teeth. So stylized representation of the teeth, obviously. And then a U shape for the bottom lip just like that. And again, Very stylized. You know, if you check this against Ron Front, that's not going to be the greatest, but it gets us a step closer to what we're gonna do here. So now I'm gonna start rounding out that point to the chin, But let me get the rest of my construction lands and first. So the other thing I like to do his draw in a hair shape a hairline. So ah, female hairlines air typically a bit more softer, at least. The way that I draw them. So male hairlines air more rigid, more defined, more angular, whatever you wanna call it, but for the female hairline and keep it more soft and subtle again. That's kind of my thought process for the entire female character as I tried to draw on so lots of curves, lots of softer lines, um may incorporate some angles, but not not nearly as many. So there's my a rough sketch to get us started, and what we'll do is we'll ever kind of looking over so we'll just draw the sides of the iris like this, but that's enough. So that will be our rough sketch just to get the ball rolling. Let's go and stop here, head over to the next lesson and continue to refine this. 7. Detailing the Forms of Our Next Example: OK, so like we did in the previous step, I'm going to softer racism. Stretch out the good old I needed a razor. I broke it. That means, I mean, no one, I guess not really. These things air really indestructible. So surprise. There's not a superhero character made of this stuff. Okay, so now soft Theresa's back and you see that later. Lead doesn't smudges much is also the beauty of this Bristol board Smooth. It's just amazing toe work with my favorite. It wasn't so darn expensive. Probably draw everything on this. We can go in and sharpened our pencil tips. I'm still using the two millimeter. Remember that you're going to rotate that like this number, not the force force. It just kind of I totally get it going, and then I pick up speed. I don't want insanely sharp tip. I just wanted a little bit more refined. And, uh so yes. So now what I want to do is get in here and adjust some lines a little bit more, but I'm really just kind of deciding, Ana, what I put down. So letting myself see through the sketch here Now, this is more of a drawn out knows for what will typically dio but just keep in mind you're gonna want to try a lot of variation, even right there. So you're going to say, Well, maybe I want just this side of the nose in a couple little marks for the nostril. A lot of artists won't even draw the upper portion of the nose. It really is a matter of preference and style. So you just have to try different variations and see what you like. But, ah, lot of times you can think with the female characters less is more and, ah, the more you render the character, especially if you're not, is, um, seasoned oven artist will say, Ah, the more you render the character the Morial, either at age or kind of an eerie vibe to the work. So it's why you see a lot of artists lean towards bless on rendering the face, especially if it's a younger character. You definitely want to do that almost regardless, but But again, if you start to render too much, he'll make the artwork start to look more, um, spooky. I guess area is the only thing that I becomes the mind there? Um because with more lions comes more, you know, shade of, uh, more shadowing, basically. So it starts to look like you're trying to make something look a little more gritty, So just keep that in mind, you know, and again age. So if you're trying to make the character look younger, you're gonna have less lines, less rendering. And if you want them to look more even villainous, sometimes you can convey your your villains with a little bit more a darkly lits scenario and more rendering. And generally it'll make him look a little a little bit more like the bad guy or girl Lieser Chen. And I'm rounding that out a lot. From what Originally Waas, we started with a point trying to use one nice consecutive curve. Really, it's It's a few bends, but it almost looks like one smooth line because they're very subtle in the shift, Uh, so intentionally trying to do them the eyebrows, I'm gonna keep these a lot thinner than the male version. I'm also not going to, um, make them have so many breaks and details. I guess it's kind of a bit smoother and I gotta correct a little bit here of you one. I is a little bit off. I'm gonna try to fix that over here. So this is where practicing your symmetry is always a good thing. I need to do it more. Um, one of things that will say about doing the eyes is that you kind of, ah can correct with the eyelashes themselves. So, for instance, if you feel like the eye opening, you've got to kind of pay attention to, um, negative shapes or, um, the reversal of some shapes. So, for instance, you might spend a lot of time focusing on the eyelashes being just the way that you want from side to side. That's definitely something you have to look out for. But what I'm studying right now is the white opening of the I. And I feel like this side is just has too much of it is to wide compared to this one. Um, so I mean need to nudge these lines around, and I can do that by working into the eyelash shape. Since the eyelashes air Ah, black shape. I can nudge those lines around. So I'm basically saying that I can add to the top of this to make the overall shape bigger . I can also cut into the white area the I and try to ah, make these match up a little bit more evenly. So it's It's a lot about pushing lines around. Basically, there's the irises, and then I want to see some of this top. I live here, my bad, and they're a little bit asymmetrical. But, hey, nobody's face is perfect. So again, I feel like the mouth is a little bit too low to see if I can notes these lines around just a little bit as I draw men. Ah, big. A big part about getting faces right is subtle shifts. That's really hard to explain to, ah, young artists, because it's just something that you keep doing as you draw over and over again, just like the fact that nobody likes the answer. How do you get better? Lots of practice. And that's not the gym of advice I was looking for, and I can totally understand how that would seem like a you know, not the thing that you want to hear, you know, already knew it required hard work. I'm already doing that I get that. But the thing is the subtleties that you learn the shifting of nudging lines around. No. Making this decision instead of that decision. As you Brender this stuff, you can you can want somebody do it, and that will help you. It's probably watching these lessons now. It will help you. But until you implement it over and over again into your work, it's not gonna entirely make sense once you implement it, uh, through day to day routines over and over you, then you have those moments. Really? Oh, I get it. Now I see why that was the right decision. Um, so it's subtle movements of lines, of shapes, of forms, things like that. So you just have toe keep looking at creative ways to do that. All right, so I think I want to thin out the next. So you exceeded its time. You know, addressing this artwork, I'm making these tiny little changes sometimes dramatic, sometimes not so dramatic, usually not so dramatic. It's more of ah, a slow crawl towards the end result sometimes. But your sheep in there, even the ears I'll tend to simplify a bit more on the female characters and let's go ahead and finishing off the eyelashes. I like to put these little points because real eyelashes obviously have a lot more points to him. But for comics, we tend to Ah, a lot of artists, myself included, will group them together and make these solid eyelashes. And then, for the pupils, try to get those in the middle. Not always the easiest thing to Dio and then a drop shadow on the iris. Make sure to kind of round that over. I think it looks a little bit more natural if you dio and then a glare to one side. What I like to do is I'll actually put the glare on the one side, and then I put a glare on the bottom lip so you got to remember the bottom lip will catch more light than the top, so you'll see some styles where they shaved the top lip right in. I at least think you should shade a little bit of the bottom lip in as it meets under the top lip, because that's kind of how the lips work. They so showing somebody's mind you can really see it. They've got big cheeks and will kind of give her cheek lines. But what happens is the bottom lip tucks under the top lip, or at least with the way our faces generally are and lit. You'll see that. So just pay attention to photos for that. And you remember, you know, you study photos, but you don't copy the photos. I mean, you can for for knowledge, for reference and practice. But, ah, a lot of times when I do this, I'll look at a photo or a glance at it. I should say, I'll pick up cues from it, but then I'll just draw in a more imaginative way. There we go. We're getting a little bit closer, so let's go ahead and stop right here and head over to the next lesson will put some hair on this character and finalize the artwork and talk a little bit about that 8. Refining the Details of the Second Example: Okay, So now, um, I should want to get rid of the G Clines and the line across the nose again. This is really where that simplifying thing is I just feel like it's too many lines in the faces. Something about it bother me when we get that out of there. It was draw in some some hairline features or some hair types, so I'm just going to start with some curves appear. And when I bring some other curves this way, most are very loose and, uh, kind of throw lines because I feel like if I don't, I always tend to make the hair look too lifeless. Have to over exaggerate the hair. I think I spoke about that, and the other character overexaggerate the hair, and then you can always tone back. I think I'm gonna go for, like, a ponytail type style. The other part to be careful of when drawing female hairstyles, is the part in the hair. Always. I think it looks really strange if you make the part of the hair to ah, overly visible on female characters. They usually have more bounce and movement to their hair, so it covers that up a lot more. You want to think about like overlapping that you don't see it as much. Just see kind of a few areas that dip in, and then it blends out kind of tough to explain, but I just feel like you over overdraw that ticket to evident and really kind of hurts. Look, And then I also think about the hair sheep. So how much in the parameters shape conveyors on? I try to shift that a bit as well, so I might look stylized. That part we get a ponytail in here, kind of radiating from the top center, like this, falling over on itself again, kind of. Just throw some of these lines around because you can always pick up on him, and if they're not good, you can let him go. But I think more is better when it comes to hair. It should really you can use it to really trace out the face of your characters. Also give her some little details, like council hearings or something, but as well and, uh, their small freckles. So again, all this is just kind of characteristics, but it it makes for more interesting character type. You can just kind of kind of scribble some of that hair And there, um, thinking, maybe some classes. - Okay , so now it gives us all the information we need. Let's take the darker pencil. I also want to bring this line back. We should add It's more shape to these glasses. They look pretty boring. His rectangles so soft to race that area bag, try to refine those a little bit more. - Try bring these out to a point. Him tape around, some using the rectangles toe shape, these ah eyeglass frames, my bad and also notices I was putting them in there. They were crooked. We're gonna be careful of that as I draw this other side. So this becomes tricky because you have more landmarks on the page. You sometimes take it for granted, like it would be easier, but it kind of exposes flaws sometimes in the work. And then, since there are more landmarks, I think it confuses sometimes where you need to put the lines. But again, this is where the sketch is so important. The sketches ah, you know, should aid you in this process of building up and making your final guesswork. Uh, What? You also have to be careful not to be too overly critical of yourself when you're doing this, especially if you're designing, you're coming up with the character and trying to design a new character. You have to kind of let yourself look, you let yourself go a little bit. You remember, too, that if it's a character you're gonna draw over and over again, you're eventually gonna figure out you know what works and what doesn't with that particular character. But in the design phase, you really have to just experiment and get, you know, the the idea is down. Not worried too much about everything being so correct. No, I'm gonna say it. This is ah, later color hair, probably a blonde or something like that. So what? You'll tend to see me do. There is not render so much in the hair. I use some line wait to, ah to convey the hair. So that's why you're seeing me doing here, not worrying too much about darkening the hair. And I might add, like little Claire's across the hair like this, you kind of have fun with those and just think of like waves in a waving really the hair. A lot of what you got to think about with hair in general is his waves and overlapping curves and ribbons. Oh, here can definitely be tricky. And it the better you get at it, the more you'll like practice, flipping it in and around and on top of itself. But again, draw light until you, so you start to see the shapes unfold that you want. I think that as your sketch you start, Teoh figure out more and more about the design is it's It's a little bit of problem solving creative problem solving. So keep adding lines. You keep adding shapes. Then all of a sudden Oh, yeah, I see what I want to see, you know, and you just make that decision. But, ah, lie yourself that time, too. Keep messing with it until that, until that moment arises. Don't no force that, I guess that's tough to say, though, because sometimes you're working out at that line and you just have to make it happen. But I guess it depends on the scenario. She don't like that. Clear it there. Nothing to think about with hair is the highs and lows. So it's very, you know, like bumpy innocence in any of these clumps of hair. It sounds gross, but basically you do You have areas that are higher and you're going to get a little bit more shading. It's gonna be clumped together. It's gonna look like a larger group of hair, and then you're gonna get much of thinner strands here and there as well. The main thing is that you just don't draw like spaghetti like one of the things that you might be noticed in here. I'm adding a lot of lines to find these shapes. But then I'm gonna combine some of those lines with shadows. And I'm also going Teoh, you know, my final passage. You know, if I was to think this, I'm really gonna simplify even further. But in the sketch, I'll add these lines to find the shapes that I'm looking for. Scandal kind of stylized the perimeter shape as well, even ah, even going as far as to add some almost angles in the work. As far as rendering, I won't add as much to this character. Like I said with the male character, I'll have more of that But, um, I'll have a little bit like areas like this where I'm trying to separate the head from the neck a little more. Give it that distance. But that's about it. I won't. I will render as many little shading lines and things like that. So there we go. There's our female character. We could add some little glares on the glasses, you know, so you take it as far as you need to. But that's that's about where I would call Call it a finished drawing for what I need, especially for thinking and then taking it to color, that kind of thing. Okay, so we're gonna wrap up right here, and let's head over to the next lesson. 9. Final Example Time Lapsed: Okay, so we're gonna do another example, and this is gonna be time lapsed up pretty quickly. So this is actually about five times the speed you can tell by the movement. My hand There. It's moving. Now, look fast. But what I want to do here is show you one example where I opened the mouth. Wider because I think this is another problem area for a lot of us. And I know I struggled with it quite a bit and sometimes still do, but I want to show you my process for getting through it. So what I like to do here is used everything else. Like we've talked about for mapping out the eyes, nose, and, uh, but then when I go to drop in the open mouth polls, I will extend that jawline. You have already extended it down once, but as I draw on this basic representation of ah, this kind of vampire mouth, I need to extend it even further. So notice that I actually drew that line three times in succession. Eso What I'm wanna really impart on you here is that if you get those basic forms in place , you congenitally ne jer lines around and get the shapes you need to make it all fit cohesively. But the part that you want to focus on, getting kind of correct and unified first are the eyes, the nose in the top lip. So that's a least how I work. And then I can generally see the other shapes as I work out from there. Now, if you're still a bit you know what you consider ah, bit of a novice. You know, you don't see these shapes fitting together as well. Yet you might want to study more the Andrew Loomis method and remember that I do have other classes on that you can check out, but it's basically just a combination of these things. So you have to learn some mapping techniques, you know, measuring the distance between the eyes and where the mouth of lines to the eyes and things like that. But then you also have to learn how to utilize the basic shapes and elaborate from there. So I think that after a while, when you draw more and more and you develop more of these characters, you start to just kind of peace shapes together. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. And once you get more confident doing that, it becomes a lot easier to draw your characters and you need less overall build upon the page. That's why you can see more advanced artists. They start to draw, and it looks like they just do everything right out of their mind. It's because they simply can see more than the broad strokes of the design. Eso here, you see, I solved to race this back again. I'm using the two h lead like we used for majority of these lessons thus far, and you could still get a pretty dark line with that. You just have to press harder. But, um, no, I can go back into this design and I can really think about things like lie in wait, you know, make things look a bit more clear and looked at him after as far as the design of the character. Yeah, but really, it's like again like I mentioned earlier. It's like drawing with shadows. You want to draw with line weight and with shadows at this stage, and you want to kind of allow yourself to style eyes. So almost to the point where something is less detailed and again think of simplifications . So try to simplify what's on the page in front of you. And instead of drawing it with a lot of lines, try to convey it with maybe a bit more shadow and some lines. And I'm not saying that you don't want to incorporate lots of neat little lines into your work. If you have a heavy rendering style, which I kind of feel like I dio then I like a lot of lines. I like a lot of little details and my rendering, but but I need to make sure that there's a certain amount of shadowing to kind of hold that all together and keep it cohesive. If not, those little lines get lost. So I've noticed when I take a an illustration like this, and I try to incorporate just a ton of lines and a ton of rendering without the shadows that I'm talking about without the thicker line weights to hold it together, it just looks, um, to softer. It doesn't look like it really occupied space, the shadows or what? Give it that solid feel and vibe to the work, and I think that's really important for allowing your rendering to actually read properly anyways, So you kind of, you know, you need both, But just keep that in mind, really work on drawing with shadows of that. Ah, makes sense there. So here I'm just adding more of those little rendering lines again. I feel like there's enough kind of shading there where I can get away with that. Now we'll admit I don't generally shade faces as much as I would shade like parts of the body and anatomy and things like that. So there is a little bit less of that. But now I'm to the point where I'm just rendering it kind of finishing it. So hopefully this is been beneficial for you. Love to know what you think of the lessons and more content is on the way. So good luck with your art and thank you for watching