Drawing Expressive Faces for Comics & Cartoons

1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to my new course, drawing expressive faces for comics and cartoons. A step-by-step guide. I'm Mike Van Orden and I'll be your instructor of this course. This immersive course, we'll delve deep into the captivating world of drawings, heads, basis for comics and cartoons. Together, we'll unlock the secrets to creating, captivating and dynamic characters that will truly come to life on your page. But what makes this course truly special? Our unique approach to learn? The power of observational learning. You'll have a front row seat to my artistic process. As I draw and commentator on each step of the way, you'll gain valuable insights into my Techniques, Decisions, artistic thinking. So let's take a closer look at what this course has in store for you. It just around 2 h. We will cover a wide range of techniques and insights that will help you elevate your art skills to new heights. I've packed every minute with valuable knowledge to ensure that you make the most of this learning experience. First and foremost, will embark on a journey of mastering facial proportions. This is an essential skill any arts. I'll guide you through understanding and implementing well-balanced, visually appealing pieces across different comments, cartoon styles. Next, we'll explore the power of expressions. We'll dive deep into the art of conveying emotions through facial features, allowing your characters to vote, joy, sadness, anger, surprise, and so much more. Together. We'll add depth and realism to your illustrations. For those of you seeking touch with the fantastical, I have a special treat in store for you. We'll delve deep into the world of monsters and pools, where I'll reveal the secrets of drawing eerie and compelling characters. Get ready to let your imagination run wild. Throughout this course. You'll not only enhance your artistic skills, but you'll also build confidence and readiness for more advanced projects. With the power of observational learning, you'll gain the tools and techniques needed to tackle even the most challenging artistic endeavors. So are you ready to join me? Great. Grab a pencil, some paper, and maybe even an eraser, and I'll see you inside 2. Let's Create a Model Sheet: Okay, so first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna kinda figure out the shapes to use. So initially when I'm drawing a head-on face, I'll just start with a quick poll. And then for the next circle here will be kind of a three-quarter view. Then this final circle, It's going to be a profile shot and that's why it can, it looks like an a. So just hop around from sketch to sketch here and break them down in generalized them as much as I can before I dive into the details. So as you can see, I'm just dividing them in half. So the first one on the left is facing straight towards us. So I've just put a center line right down the middle. I'm doing this. I extended that center line. And so now I'm stretching that center line down to the jaw. And I'm doing the same thing here in the center, which is the three-quarter view, as well as the profile shot. So I'm kind of trying to follow the same guidelines with each shot. And the reason I'm doing this is so in my head, if I'm working on all this simultaneously, I can kill three birds with 1 st, but I can also keep the character similarities there. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm basically creating a division between the outside of the head and then I'm inserting it. Those lines will indicate where the eyeballs will kind of stuff. I don't like that. Beginner artists, a lot of times it'll draw the eyes, always the outside of the face. And I really want to show you guys how to measure and keep everything in a certain proximity. Now, keep in mind, as I'm drawing, this is just my style. But the rules, the principles and the foundations, they can work with any one style. So whereas you might not draw like me or wants to draw like me, you can choose your own methods and styles and how you're going to approach it. But I do want you for the sake of learning, to follow along with how I'm doing. I'm basically piecing in the eye sockets. Now. I dropped down, I put like a triangular shape for the nose. And then eventually I'll show where the IRR falls and falls. And then from there, we'll basically be able to go ahead and start adding some features. Now I'm dropping a line straight down the middle from the center of the eyeball down. And that indicates the sides of my mouth. Where those lines intersect is where the mouth with Begin. And I'm basically eyeballing all this stuff. When I draw faces. I don't use any strict measurements. I'm just trying to get things where they look good enough for me. Especially in this part of the process, which is just the under drawing. So you're not really getting attached to these drawings. These are just simple guidelines. What you'll end up doing is in general, when you're drawing, you'll start with your guidelines. There'll be very loosened sketchy. You'll do this to throw down the information, the data as fast as you can. Come back and you'll start reworking and finding your lines that you want to keep. Ultimately. Then you'll erase all the guidelines altogether and redraw everything in a much cleaner, tighter version. But for the sake of teaching you the principles of head shots. I'm not going to deepen the details in this one. This is a very short video. As you can see, I've just broken out a very basic ballpoint pen. I'm confident enough in my guidelines that I know that right now I can start placing in the elements. So those elements would be the eyeballs first. And then I'll put some very light eyebrow on top of that. And then I'll just throw in some nostrils and a little circular, oval shape of the nose just to kind of shape it in. And then same with the mouth. And I'll usually after I draw the line of the mouth crease, I'll do a little on your lip. And then I've jumped down and draw the chin from the chin and the jaw. I worked at Joel, work upwards and then I'll throw in some ears. So this is not a particular character. It was just a generic head shot that I chose. Just to kinda show you how I approach. Now as we get further on in the videos, will go more into detail with shading and really diving into certain shapes and elements and shadows and all that good stuff. But for now, I'm just keeping it very simple and basic. Now. What I'm doing here is I'm just going to pinpointing where things might fall like the cheekbones, simple lines, neck muscles. I'll probably finish up the top of his head is a circular shape, just like that. And it doesn't have to be perfect. This is just a model, right? You've heard of a model sheet. A lot of animators use them, storyboard artists, comic artists. Basically a model sheet is just to keep your character in front of you at all times. If you're drawing a more well established character. And we just draw just like this, like a front, a profile, three-quarter or maybe even rear view shot. Just so you have all the character dynamics in front of you. Especially if there's any certain costume elements that might change on either side of the face. Same thing. Procedure doesn't really change. I'm drawing the eyes, nose, outlined, the shape of the jaw, the eye sockets, the mouth is going in here. I'll draw and neck muscles is going to the back of the head. Then traps and all that good stuff. Then moves up the head. They're just trying to do all these one after the next. So now I'm doing the profile shot. Profiles a little bit more difficult for people. There's a lot of guesswork that goes on. But if you keep the formula very similar to what I've done here, just practice a little bit. It's going to become easier as you practice. It's just, it's an unfamiliar shot for most people. Most people are used to looking at head-on shots or three-quarter views. But I really believe that we should try and master drawing the head from all angles. And we can get into upshots and down shots and extreme close-ups and all that stuff too. But for now, let's just keep it simple and pay attention to the, the bare basics. I would say. I'm just trawling and the elements here as well. I think what I'll do now is I'll draw in some other lines like Temple lines and just make it all makes sense. In my mind. I know where everything falls and I do this all the time. So I usually draw from the upper brow. I'll do like a little temple shot. I might even curve it over to reshow, the hairline. Just kinda Creates shape and form. And this is really important. As an artist, you always want to keep your shape and form very, very regular, very easy to read, very easy to follow. And remember. I always say to my students, less is more. So, don't make it too complicated. Remember, I don't know if you learned this in school, but there's always a stain. It was k ISS. It's simple stuff. Well, I always remind myself, you know, try to keep things really simple. Because if you can keep everything simple and easy and graceful, you can always come back and add more intricate details later. So as you can see, I'm just adding some features. And this is just for me. Okay, Well, that's going to wrap it up for this one. This is your model sheet. So let's move on to the next video so we can put these to work. 3. Drawing Heroic Faces Pt 1 : Okay, Well, here we go. And this segment, we are going to dive straight into the three-quarter view. And as you can see, I'm just quickly rendering a circular shape. And at this point, everything's going to look kind of muddy and messy, but that's okay. We're supposed to be moving our consoles rather quickly and loosely. So don't get too attached to these initial shapes. I'm just trying to find the particular lines at work best for you. So as you can see, I've drawn in a center line. I pulled it down to the chin. I threw in a circle in the center there between the eyes. And from here, I'm just adding where I want my eye sockets to be. Those top two lines would be the eyebrows. And you don't have to do yours this way. I mean, I've provided you with a template that you can follow. This is just a stylistic approach since the name of this course is how to draw faces in a baby or cartoony style. Then I've started rendering in some shapes for eyes, which are usually kind of a almond shape. And then I just jump right into the nose. And as you can see the tip of the nose I make like a distorted kind of diamond shape. Dropped down a little bit further, add in a line for the mouth. This is me just measuring down straight from the center of the eyes to the edge just to make sure that I have my proportions fairly accurate. And I'll just continue rendering in these messy lines. And ultimately, if you've taken any of my other courses, you're going to realize that we initially do this with almost all of our sketches. Then we will go ahead and erase these construction lines, just leaving a residue behind. And then we'll redraw it. Just to give you a preview of what's, what's happening. Now I'm adding in some contours and shapes for the chin and jaw line. Eye sockets. I'm putting in where I think the eyeballs would fall. And I'm going to continue doing this for a couple of more minutes here, going in here. But as you'll see, after I erase this, a lot of these things are subject to move around. So I might drop the ear down a little bit. I might make the mouth a different shape. This is all just kinda data and information just to show my mind where things fall. And then it's up to me to draw from there. Alright, so I've gotten in the basic shapes and I disappoint. I think it's getting really close to just erasing all of this. So I'll break out my eraser. I'll quickly just lightly erase all this stuff, leaving just a residue of the lines behind so I can still see them and follow them. They're just guidelines at this point. So now I'll go in for the final redraw. Just at this point, you're just trying to find the lines that you want to use ultimately sphere here that you're going to focus on a few things. You're going to focus on your line weights, which is, you know, if you've taken any of my other courses, I talked a little bit about this, shadows, light sources and things like that. For all these sketches, we're just assuming that the light source is above the head. What that will mean is that anything further away from the light is going to have a thicker, darker line. And it will also cast shadow. Anything closer to the light, which would be the top of the head. It's going to be a thinner line with less. Let's shadows and shades, disciplines simplistically. So I've drawn in the furthest IOA, shaping in the nose, the nostrils. At this point I'm just kinda drawing and thinking and taking any type of adjustments that I deem necessary. There's his mouth and I've kept it very bare. Not, not too much. Because I know that when I get to the rendering phase which is coming up, I can add more shades and renders and rendering cross hatches and all that good stuff to make everything pop out a little bit more. Right now, the most important part of this phase is just outlining the actual FaceTime, trying to capture. There I already casted my first shadow. And that just tells my mind that I've made the decision, like I said earlier, that the light source is coming from above Because if the light source is coming from below, you wouldn't see a shadow underneath the nose. You can see the shadow above the notes. If you want me to do a course just specifically on light sources and shadows and shading. Leave me some feedback and let me know. And it is on the books, but I'm not sure how urgently it's needed. But that might be something that a lot of you might benefit from. So as you can see, I'm dropping down his ear. And for ears, ears come in all shapes and sizes. Don't get too attached to how your ear looks. I used to be really, really a stickler about years and it really drove me crazy. I can never seem to get my ears to look right. Now. I'm just kinda freestyle it and it tends to work in. You'll see me bounce around from like wedges did just now. I'll jump to the ear, to the furrowing of the brow marks, the lines. Some cheek patches. Now I'm printing lightly penciling in or I think the hairline would fall. And hair lines, noses, all this stuff. They all come in all shapes and sizes. Keep that in mind. Don't try to draw it exactly like me. You're all like how you instinctively want to draw. Just use me and my techniques and my guidance as reference. Just so you know, the principles and foundations. Probably heard the saying and you might have even heard me say before, before you can break the rules, you have to know them. And all I'm doing is teaching you some guidelines and rules. What you choose to do with them. It's completely up to you. I just want you to learn them so that you feel more confident with your pencils, that you can start trying out new techniques and taking more risks. The last thing I want you to do is to just religiously draw the same thing over and over again and not kind of see what your full potential is. Your hinder yourself when you start becoming too rigid. So I've shaped in the jaw line, I'm casting some shadow under the chin here. And a more shadow under the ear. I'll probably end up drawing more neck, neck muscles. Now I'm placing the hair along the hairline. And these are just kinda squiggly lines. They're just designed to look like hair shape. Then from here, I'm just experimenting with a hairstyle. I'm making this character up on the fly. So it wasn't pre-plan. That was kinda the way I wanted this course to be as you're just kinda watching over my shoulders like a fly on the wall. And I am just drawing in my sketchbook. And as I'm drawing in my sketchbook, I'm problem-solving. I'm running into little issues that have to figure out how to get past them. And I'm kinda just inwardly observing myself and just wondering if there's a better way to do something. And you'll see all these videos. And I think that's what makes these videos very invaluable, is that it's real time and it's the real thing. There's some editing or cutting anything out. I'm not trying to show you all the glory. I'm showing you from beginning to end how I approach my air. Thanks a lot. The stigma away and the elusiveness kind of gives you a peek behind the curtain. So now I'm just drawing in some hairs and I contrast that to here on the outside there to oppose the inner hair. And just mix the art pop a little bit more. I'm pretty much close to done with most of this rendering. The only thing left really is I like to add stubble. So I'll, in a few seconds here, I'll drop down and I'll add some stumble on the chin and like that. And then I'll show you my techniques for that too. Now I'm just going to finalizing a few, a few things. And here we go. We're going to dive into some stubble, which is basically just a quick short lines that are primarily in a uniform fashion. It's fun. Experiment is experimenting with these textures kind of opens more doors for you and it helps you to kind of elaborate and express your style a little bit more. Here we go. We're wrapping up here on his kind of Double and his beard. She's got the 05:00 shadow going on. And to me, that's pretty much enough. And so what we'll do next is what kind of recap this whole three-quarter view shot that can reiterate the steps that we follow. I know it's a lot of information to take them. Alright, so let's go ahead and jump over and do a quick recap. So I started with a sphere, drew a line three-quarters over on the other side, shaped in my jaw line. Now I'm hollowing out the sphere to kinda make it look more three-dimensional. I'm adding some eye sockets, a quick little nose, and almost looks like a skull. And this is just a quick little side shot and a little small, not too detailed rendering. But what I'm doing is I'm just finding the shapes and finding the placements of everything and dropping in the neck. And now I'm gonna do the same thing. Lightly erase, come back in and redraw it. And I think if memory serves me, give you a couple of different renditions of a three-quarter view here. Well, this is very small. Just try and follow along. It's just, you're not trying to copy this. You're just observing right now. This is mostly an observational course where you can then take what you're learning and put the practice. But in the meantime, it's best to just observe the first few times that you watch. If you want to draw along, that's fine, but I really recommend that you draw along after you've watched this a few times to get the information saturated in your mind. So I'm actually look at both sketches and kind of trying to get the angle very similar. And this is for myself, really. As I'm teaching you, I'm teaching myself and I'm experimentally. So now I'm trying some different eyebrows to give them a different expression. During an ear throwing in the mouth, shading in the shadow underneath the bottom lip, and erasing the top of the head. So I have kind of room to play with things that are thrown, some hair or front costume elements, whatever you choose where I choose. Let's say complete an airline here. So playing around some hairstyles, and this time I can push the hair away. Has with the initial sketch, I pulled the hair towards us. And then I said to myself, You know what? Let's go ahead and raise the year, erase the hair. And let's put in a kind of a costume element. So I'm just drawing the shape of his head. He looks like he's bald now, but that all changes in a matter of seconds. I'm drawing on a mask here. Honestly. This is kind of a template to every character I draw. Almost every character can look very similar. All you do is change a few prominent features. Takes the character in a whole different direction. Now I'm making up some weird symbol, like a W looking. I have no idea why the disk is just on a whim. I do this a lot when I'm playing around and doing character design. But there you go. Very quick rendering of a three-quarter view. I give you two here to look at 4. Drawing Heroic Faces Pt 2: So let's go ahead and move on. This is gonna be a front facing head shot. This is a tough one for a lot of people because symmetrically it's a difficult one to pull off. But if you put all your lines in the right place and you have your proportions, kinda preset becomes a lot easier. So as you can see, I've thrown, thrown in multiple horizontal lines. I've drawn in the central line. And those horizontal lines serve no more purpose than just to keep everything in alignment. I'm not oh, and I did the inset of the face, as you can see, I've done an inner line on each side to kind of guide me and kinda blockade the furthest extension of how how much I want the eye sockets to go out. Now I'm just rapidly drawing this in shaping it and finding all the proportions and shapes as needed. Again, I always look at this face has an informational phase where I'm just throwing as much on the paper as I possibly can that I know that I'm gonna be erasing and I'll use it as a guideline later. So none of this stuff is permanent. Some darkening in a few lines. Just to kinda give me the attitude of the character. So that when I erase it, I can still see that there's some emotion there. I turned his smirk a little bit upwards. And so I'm making a little bit happier. Or I guess you can call it a happy, could be smug or not. I'm just going to lightly erase these lines. As you can see. There's just nothing left for me to keep track. Oops. There we go. Now, let's go ahead and redraw the final lines. I typically it will start with the eyes just kinda captured the mood. But I won't get too educated in the details just yet. I tend to try to keep my pencil moving relatively fast throughout the whole process, even though my final stages of just cleaning up the rendering. I just like to keep the pencil moving because it makes me feel more fluid and it feels as though I'm adding more energy to the sketch. Now. I know a lot of you are very slow artists and we try to, you know, one thing I will say is your best not to be a perfectionist. If you catch yourself being a perfectionist, go ahead and slow it down. And just observe why you're doing that. And also notice that when you are being a perfectionist, you're really just hindering the whole process as a whole. So now I've outlined most of the facial features, adding in the ears and the little shadow under the nose. There's cheats. I'm trying to get this one relatively quick. Growing in the year. Placement here. Now I'll jump over and try to do this. The ear, similar to the one on the left. And since I'm right-handed, I tend to try and start from the left and work my way to the right. That way I can see things as a whole. I noticed that I made this year a little too small. On the left side. I just enlarge that. And that's the beauty of having erase, right? Is that you can go ahead and clean up and correct your mistakes on this on the spot on the fly. I'm just throwing in some wavy lines. I'm just making up this hairstyle. Shading. As I'm lower to the ears, I'm shading in because it's further away from the light. And then as we get closer to the top, I'll leave a lot for unshaded just to signify that there is a light source up there. And that's just for me. I am not sure. I forget if I added a suitable to this guy. But regardless, it doesn't really matter as long as all the Central zone. They're like the facial structure, the lines, the emotions, all that good stuff. Is there. Any kind of rendering is just optional at that point. Those look like I'm adding some squiggly lines to represent as when we're doing our model sheet, I'll usually go from that top brow and I'll create something. But that's it. So we'll move on to the head, to the profile headshot now. And basically I'm going to start with the same. Start with a circle. This time we're facing the, the pace will be going to the left. And so I'm just kinda working in the structure that I wanted to use for this particular figure. That first-line that's curving down and word is worthy, I would fall. And then now I'm just kinda drawing work. I'm projecting the bridge of the nose to be. Then I'll draw from the nose down to the chin. And I'll continue to do this all throughout the whole sketch until I have interests about right. So Chen jaw line. And the jaw line will go up at an angle. Then I will place my ear, eyebrow, the upper orbital. Then there you go. You have the size of the head. The muscle gone to the back of the neck. Got all the essential information down. So, you know what's coming up next once we get this all in, can you take a guess of what my next step will be? I'm sure you can hear him just kind of pinpointing and anchoring in certain proportions and features where I want them to fall. And you guessed it, lightly erase. Leaving just the ghost of the sketch behind. And now let's go back and for those final lines. So I like to start with the eye because as mentioned, it kinda helps to establish the mood and the life of the character. Throwing in some eyebrows on top. And now I'm just kind of pinpointing the bridge and the furrow of the brow. Here's the nostril and the nose and then have a little upper lip. And lower lip. Here's the outside of the chin. A little work that in you can see I'm breaking Logan's here, which is fine. I'm doing the outer shape of the ear and the inner ear lobe and all that good stuff. The inner ear structure. For me, I like to keep this a little bit cartoony, especially from this side. I think it has a really cool look when you have the face, kind of angular. Like I've established it here. And then I'm just going in and working in the airline again. Doing those shading into the sideburns, establishing where the hair falls and pushing it out in front of the face. Let's just kinda, these are just kinda elements that help sell the actual sketch. I didn't like that year, so just reworking it, adding some shadow. And I just want everything to look pretty uniform. So I don't want the ear to be too distracting from the rest of the photos, so I'm trying to minimize it as much as possible. There you go. There's a fine looking here. Now, I'm going to go ahead and kind of established the outer area of the hair, the clumps. And you can see I'm shading in the front of the hair because I'm imagining again that the light source is above and behind the character. So early on adding some stubble, I guess I wanted to just jump into it. Stumbles a lot of fun. I should do a whole class on just stumble. Now really it's an overlooked rendering technique and it's really easy to do. And it really has a good impact. Now, why haven't they would establish some shadow under that knows. Okay, there you go. Shadow under the nose and under the neck. This is looking like a pretty clean sketch. It's got all the everything you need for a profile shop. We'll draw some hair there. Yeah. That's that's pretty much it. So let's go ahead and jump into some last minute additional tips. So while I'm drawing these types of things, I'm thinking about and I just wanted to impart them on to you. Drawing eyes, just keep them very simple. You know, I know when you're drawing a very realistic II, you don't want to do it this way, but when you draw any kind of a cartoony, I just keep it very simple and focus on the actual shapes. So you can see I could do like a slanted, angry looking eye, the eyeball that's being cut off by the upper part of the eye. And this is just one interpretation of me. And everyone has different looking dice. Experiment with this kind of stuff. I'll jump over here and I'm doing an eye from head-on and kinda showing. And this is my thought process to, you know, you're imagining that the eyeball is round. And so you're just not seeing that much of it, right? Then I erase it and now I'm just kind of following along my, my earlier constructive lines. And just drawing eyes. Here's another one. This one from the side profile. It's almost like a Pac-Man, right? I like to do these in my sketchbook and you can have reiterate the lessons, helps me to solidify what I've learned and kind of reinforce it to my mind. So I don't have to try so hard to recall this stuff in the future. You went all of us to become to become second nature. So now I'm just drawing kind of a volleyball sphere. And each one of those little dots is representing the pupil of an eye. And then I'm drawing the Irish around it. This is just me imagining that the eye can move in just about any angle possible. So I'm just imagining and animating in my mind. Then I think I'm going to jump over to some noses and keeping those as very basic. Like a triangular shaped like this, like an oblique triangle. Then, you know, for facing almost like the diamond shape and work our way up. These are the shapes they're going in my mind. And I'm always really stressing to my students. Always try to look at things in chimps. That's going to cover for now. Thanks for joining me in this quick little lesson. The next one is gonna be a lot and we're gonna be focusing on drawing monsters and goals. So get ready. I'll see you there. 5. Drawing Monsters & Ghouls Pt1: Okay, So same concept. We're going to now start working on creating a monster, rule. Villain, whatever you want to call it. And generally when I'm drawing from imagination like this, even at this step, I really have no idea what I'm drawing. I'm drawing. I'm just creating it on the fly. And then I realized, like my pencils a little bit too light and I pick up an HB lead. And you can see the same concepts apply here. I'm in setting these lines to establish where the outer I would fall. And then I'm just throwing in some little beady little eyes. And always remember when you're at this stage that nothing is permanent. This is the stuff that if you overthink it too much, it's going to hinder your progress. I say just dive right in, dive in, and just start sketching something and allow your pencil to flow. Move very loosely. As you can see how I'm doing it here. I always tell my students and I'm sure I've mentioned this maybe even a few times in this short course. Always keep your pencils moving. The only time I ever really slow down my pencil is when I'm doing my extreme clean up, tightening up the lines. But as you can see here, it's unnecessary to move too slow. In fact, I encourage you to just let it all out here. Just mine might even be a little too clean to be honest. You just want to keep drawing and shaping, conforming, and allowing the art to flow through your pencil. There becomes, there comes a point where I really feel I only have 50% of the control. I'm kind of hiding the pencil, but really the other 50% of the pencils guiding me. And it sounds a little bit weird and a little bit far-fetched, but honestly, I've been drawing long enough to know that a lot of this stuff is in the subconscious mind. So now I'm just kinda Who's racing the first draft, so to speak, which is the under drawing. And as always, you leave just a little paint. Faint faint outline of what was there before. And it just again, this is just for you to use as a guideline to further establish your ears catch. With this. I think in my mind, I've got kind of a creature ask visual that I'm going for. Now. I'm just going to draw in the basic start. The eyes work my way down to the nose, dropped down where I think the mouth will be. Basically from there. It's just a matter of adding certain features and nuances that kind of help to mold it into the character of your choosing. So just watch along here. I am. I'm a little hesitant. I'm not I'm not really diving into their lines just yet because honestly, I'm still kind of establishing the idea in my head. I think I'm going for some sort of a monster, human type creature. But honestly, you'll do this too. Wasn't 100% sure. It wasn't. Like I said, Hey, here's Spider-Man, Let's draw Spider-Man. Or here's the whole core. Batman, or someone that we've drawn 1 million times. And you know, all the elements in details. This one I was trying to be creative. And as I'm laying it out, but at the same time, considering what type of the features or elements or, or whatever I can add to this character. Establish it, and make it more original. And it's a challenge, I'll be honest, it is a challenge. But these challenges, they make you grow. And you can see just like any other character, drawing in some neck muscles, small traps. And this is bringing me in tool comfortable, familiar area. Then I'm just going to work on some brow shapes and just work my way up And I think I will even add some forms, something to kind of establish there's some sort of theme and creature. So here I'm adding some forms. And these are just temporary. I can I can always alter them or change them or move them. That's why we're starting out with pencil. It's easiest to read erase, and we always want to leave room for mistakes or improvement. And I'm still just outlining here. It's kind of starting to come to me now that these beers going. And now I'm shaping up the rest of his skull. I'm thinking to myself, alright, you can work with this. And then as you'll see, we can start adding certainly more horns, lateral horns going down the middle ahead, snarl lines and things like that. But what's really going to make this little sketch pop is when we start adding shadows and shading and textures and stuff like that to it. And that's why I wanted to include this into a lesson because it's more of a freestyle. And it's really just so you don't feel alone in your work. Because a lot of times I remember when I was first starting to draw, I had so many unanswered questions and I didn't really know if I was doing it right. And the way I've designed this course and how many other courses is, I wanted you to have that perspective of a fly on the wall. You're hopped up in, popped up on my shoulder here and there. Just looking down. And you're just watching the process. This is something that when I was first starting out, I really wish I had the ability to do this day and age. We're very fortunate with the technology and the capabilities that we have available to us. I don't take it for granted. Now. I'm going to continue sketching around, add some earrings, no nose rings and all that good stuff. And now I'm thinking, Okay, well, what do I wanna do next? Do I want to add shadows? I think I'm just kind of figuring out which principle ago with started going into an HP. But you know what? I'm going to sharpen up this. This is a to H led. By the way, I haven't mentioned it. This is a lead holder. It's a two millimeter lead, so it's a thicker, bigger of lead. And it does require a special specialized sharpener, which will help you to know. You're really, really sharp lines that you can pull. With. My opinion, It's one of the best pencils that you can use. If you don't have this available, just skip to it. Would pencil, it's fine. Any type of 2Ds for HB pencil or even if you're really comfortable with pencils, you can do that as well. I don't really use, we click mechanical pencils as often as a lot of artists do. I prefer this technical pencil myself, but it's really up to you. What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander, right? So now I'm establishing where I want to put my blocks. So I'm following up a lot. The eyes, I'm drawing in the nostrils, but I think you'll see I will draw kind of a shadow underneath the nose and just watch along here. I'm not going to talk too much because at this point, it's just a single symbol. Here. You're establishing your lungs. This is the details. And I think sometimes it's best to just be watched. If I see something that I think I mentioned in the video, I'll certainly blurted out to you. I don't want you to miss out on anything, but really just kinda keep an eye on what I'm doing. Just watch, watch the hands, watch their lead, watch how I do certain things. I'm just kinda formulating my ultimate shapes here that I want to keep. These will be my final lines, but there'll be the lines that well, you know what, you can call them the final lines. They're just the final lines without the shadows added. So this is kinda like my outline. So when you're drawing, you're going to start with you're under drawing your quick gesture sketch, which is really just throwing down the data and information as fast as you can. And then you're going to erase that lately. You're going to keep the lines that stay behind. From there. You're going to start doing your outline, which is kind of a cleanup tasks. And then from the clean-up task, you're going to start with finding your shadows in your darks. And then you're going to start splitting those n. And then you'll start adding more texture is whether it'd be cross hatches or if it's scales, air, whatever the case may be. Now, whether I speed this up or keep it at a slower pace, it really doesn't matter because I want you to just get the principles here. So you can see that I'm just outlining certain things like the teeth and mouth and all that good stuff. Then once I feel confident enough that have the lines down but I need, That's what I'll start jumping into the shadow work. I hope this is enough for you to see. Typically when I have students watch my videos, I know that we're so used to using our phones, but honestly, if you have access to a a tablet or a laptop, MacBook, or whatever, or better yet, even that TV, I'd really prefer that you use something like that. When I watch my own videos at home, I watched them on my TV. I edit them on my MacBook. But when I watched the final draft, I always watch my TV to see how the experiences. And nine times out of ten, you're gonna get a lot more when you watch it on an actual television or a monitor of some sort. But when you're watching on your phone, you're really getting the least value for this. However, I will add that if you watch it a few times on the TV or on a computer screen or tablet or whatever. You've gotten the hang of it. And then later you re-watch it on the phone. That's perfectly fine. If you're on the go, you want to listen to it or watch it while you're sitting under train, going to school or work or whatever. That's perfectly fine. But generally when you're trying to sit down and learn and just absorb all the information. I want you to see this. And the biggest available platform or the bytes you have excessive. They have access to. And you don't have to redraw this creature. We're going to go ahead and draw, I think two more, maybe even more, two or three more. And I'm just going to make them all up. Let me draw more than that. It just depends on my float. And as you can see, I made this character up completely. But there are elements in certain details to the character. They're familiar, right? Because that's all art is. When you're creating your, gathering all your information, all your memories and all your experiences. And we're just kinda compiling them all in certain combinations. That's, that's it. And that's generally what creativity is. Alright? In my opinion, pretty much far enough now where I can start shading and shadow in the year here. And if I like it, I'll move TO there and I'll do the same thing. As I started shadowing in the little crevices and details. My confidence grows. I started thinking to myself, okay, I'm onto something. I've got it. So let's go under the nose. And typically when you're drawing comics and stuff like this, I'm always putting the light source above and behind the character. So imaginal a bulb just sitting over the characters. If you want to come up with a name for this guy, by all means, go for it. If we wanted to create a version similar to this, you my guest or if you want to have your own. No. I encourage you to do stuff like this often. Just take the principles that you understand, which is establishing the head at whichever view it's facing. Throw in the areas where the eye socket is gonna be the mouth, nose. And then from there just build off of it and add your own combinations. Can see how things unfold. If it doesn't work out every time. Who cares? It's practice. This is your sketchbook, right? This isn't, you're not trying to draw something that you can sell to the world just yet. You're, you're learning. I'm adding some shadow underneath the horns that are closest to us. This just makes it pop a little bit more. Nothing has to be perfect here. Alright? So I don't really need to spend too much more time on this guy, but I think you get the gist of it. We created a character from nothing. That's, that was the agenda, that was the assignment. A monstrous kind of ghoulish character from imagination. So at this stage, I just started drawing some more striations, little bit more details and line work and scribbles here and scribbles there just to make it pop, darken in the eyes a little bit. Make them look a little bit more defined. Yeah. I mean, that's not much more I can say about this one. All right. So how am I feeling? I'm feeling pretty good. 6. Drawing Monsters Pt 2: So now let's move on to the next one. So in my head right now I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just throwing in a circular shape to see if something pops into my head. Very light loose. That was going with a three-quarter angle. But I'm also keeping in mind that this is kind of a creature as I don't need to get things perfect. Don't have to overthink. And so what I'm doing here is just, I believe my little lines are the little wavy lines are representing a hair. I'm drawing. Okay. I Harry creature, this long hair, eyeballs and a mouth. And keeping a very simplistic. But at the same time it's effective because it's still, it's still fits the job. So now I'm darkening in the eyes in finding my lines. And I think I'll do this one pretty quick. As you can see, their mouth is very cartoony as it was meant to be. I wasn't trying to get super intricate on this, but just keep it a fun so I don't run out of steam. And that's something that I do recommend is when you are drawing like this. Breaks once in a while. Take a five-minute break, walk around, stretch, ten-minute break, go outside and get some sun, grab some water, keep yourself hydrated. All that stuff. Really, really important. So here I go again, I'm kind of fine tuning the outline of the clumps of hair. And it's kind of playing around here. The year, which was even necessary. I could have just drawn here or there, but I'm stubborn sometimes. I like to challenge myself. Now I'm just going to kinda make this up on the fly, just shade in some hair and let the chips fall where they may. That's my mindset. What's good? Great. If not, me, erase and start over. No big deal. I think I'll start drawing in some shadows here under the eyes. The same thing with the other. Underneath the mouth, the chin area shaded in here. You can see like if you've watched my art, if you've been following me for long enough. Generally try and follow the same rules. Keeps everything very uniform. And once you can formulate a process, makes life a lot easier because it cuts the guesswork at home. At this point. Everything is just becoming second nature because I've done this kind of stuff so many times that I kinda know where things are in the fall, I know how to do it. I'm not intimidated by confidence is already pretty high. And this is where you want to be. The only way to get there is through sheer just practice, commitment, and just showing up. One of the big things today is distraction, right? So if you find yourself distracted by what they call dunes, true doom scrolling on social media, or just watching you mindless videos on certain platforms. Really observe yourself and your own habits. And figure out which, which one of those habits, which, if any, are serving you and your purpose to become a better artist or whatever it is that you're endeavor is. Which other habits might be holding you back. Really get serious about this because no one's gonna do this. 40. Figure out what your priorities are, what your goals are. If you haven't reached them yet. And if you are, the reason, if your life choices Habits are the reasons that you aren't where you want to be. Starting to get really good inventory of yourself and figure out what should I be doing now. And as I said this to you, I see the same thing for myself. This isn't me preaching to you. This is me kinda regurgitating what I tell myself. I'm drawing another head shape and just kinda figuring out what am I doing here. It looks like a three-quarter view. Here's some eye sockets there, a chin, draw a line and keeping everything very light. Which tells me internally that I don't really know what the heck I'm doing. But I'm going to figure it out. That's mentality or mindset that you might want to adopt is no, you might not always know what you're drawing or what the end is going to be and that's perfectly fine. As long as you're pushing towards some, right. Because as you sketch, you're going to uncover the two-dimensional sculpture you're making because that's all sketching it is. It's sculpting in two-dimensions and trying to make them look three-dimensional. So now I'm just playing around. And I think initially what I had in mind was I wanted to draw something that looks kinda robotic, like a sidewalk or type creature. Whether or not stick with that is yet to be determined. But I'm keeping my shapes blocky. Kept the eyes very rounded, circular and kinda popped in, bulgy, popped out. You know, as I'm drawing this nose, I can ask myself what they're like, What the heck are you doing? Where are we going with this? Because I'm making up on the fly. And the cool thing about making things up on the fly is it challenges you to simultaneously solve problems. The biggest problems that you'll run into in this phase, our findings in proportions, in placements and kinda just making it all work. This is the beauty of just drawing from imagination. So now I'm drawing the outline of the chin and I it a longer chain. I might change that humans really, you know. And as I'm compensating here in drawing and creating for you, I want to ask, Take Me Out of them either. If you've taken other courses of mine. I'm trying to find a method that really works for teaching. For me personally. I always, I always learn the most whenever I watched an artist. That's one of the reasons I wanted to break off the actual pencil and paper. Let me know if this method works for you. Some people, like when I take a model she or like a reference guide and trace over it in lecture about certain muscles and stuff like that. But to be honest, I get a little bored with that. Feel like, no, I feel like you guys have learned so much about what goes where and what does what. I want to see you start putting it into action. Want to see you taking what you've learned and just, you know, it's like building a car. What's the point of building a car if you've never been to drive it. Alright. So with my lessons now, like this one, I imagined myself handing you the car keys. Like, alright. I've created the path for you. I've created the race track and giving you the car or the keys. And I'm kinda like your guy. Well, they call it the guy had the desk, the guy in the chair. And I'm I'm just kinda guiding you along the way. As you can see, this looks like almost like a Dr. Do. It wasn't Dr. Doom but, you know, have a metal looking character, like a robotic, but maybe there's a human behind it. I put a weight on top of him. And his impromptu. I like this kind of stuff. By the way, I'm drawing on my giant mouse pad I got. And it's really cool, has a lot of Jim Lee with famous Jim Lee spread of Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman. The DC Trinity. Little background. Right? So at this point I'm just adding more shadow work and no, we just created this guy from scratch. What I'm doing this to kind of show you that it's not as hard as you think a lot of times were intimidated because we become unsure of ourselves, because we start overthinking. And a lot of beginner artists where I see them do is they try to measure too much. That's why you'll hardly see me talk about measurements in my videos because there's already enough of that out there. I really want you to start putting this into practice. And I'm going to tell you that it's really good to learn the measurements. It's good to learn those rules because you can't break the rules until you learn them. And so I do encourage you, if you haven't taken the courses, I have beginner courses off very available. I don't consider this course a beginner course. Now, if you are brave and you are a beginner, and you want to try your hand in this, that's perfectly fine. But I would consider is more of an intermediate, not, not super advanced, but more intermediate, higher confidence level. Someone who you've got your anatomy down on you, you understand faces and heads and all that good stuff. But you just want to bring some more life to your drawings. And that's, that's what I'm attempting to show you here, is light comes through to his chances. 7. Drawing Monsters & Ghouls Pt3: So now I'm just going to start drawing another shot apparently. And let's see, let's see where we go with this one. Big bulky. This character is going to be facing other way towards his left or right. And so just loosely throwing in some placements of where I want this characteristic features to fall. And once I have them loosely defined, I'll probably just erase this and start adding a few more details. And just, you're constantly building off each line. So for every other line, you put down your justifying that one with another and another and another until things just kinda form. I remember my thought process was stopped and erase. What am I going? Where am I going with this guy? I have no idea. But me being struggling as usual. I just decided. Yeah. Let's just keep calling. The sake of the lesson. I don't want to be a perfectionist. I'm always the one preaching against it. So I started out cheek bone connected to the mouth, into the eyes, the nose, all that good stuff. Coming up here where you think I'm going to do, I'm going to erase it and leave the lines behind. Just kinda rework it. Just like everything else. Nothing you eventually, this stuff will become a lot easier for you. I'm hoping that what I'm putting down you're picking up. If it's not coming together as smoothly and quickly as you'd like, It's okay. Just keep at it. Keep watching and listening and keep learning. Thing in life, especially art is repetition. Here we go. So first thing I'm going to do is establish where I want the creatures I to fall. And this gives me an anchor. So when you think of an anchor point, destination or a point that you can build from, right? So this is an inker I'm going to use, and I'm going to build off of. Now that I have that eyeball here, I've established somewhat of a character future. Then I just got to figure out, what else am I going to have? Five next to the nose, next to the premise of his face, mouth, upper lip and lower lip. Orbital bones is cheekbones. All that good stuff. Alright. Shadows. Of course. It's all experimental. So there's zero pressure on my end. Really. What, what really gets me going here is the challenge of hearing out how to make it at least something that can present to you as a student. Never be afraid to make mistakes. And those mistakes, typically, there'll be learning points. And then there's a lot happening mistakes in this industry. Now I'm just going to establish him, maybe his ears and the following year it's kinda like turnout. Now I'm drawing a big folder type character. If memory serves me, I might even jump off his character soon, work on another one, and then bounce back. And that's the thing that you can do too, is when you have the liberty to work on your own in your sketch book. There don't get too attached to one particular drawing. Jump around. Like the song, right? And once, once you let go of what you're drawing, ideas, pop into your head. They weren't even expecting or thinking about before. So this is where I believe I'm going to jump over. Step wait a little bit. Because I was like, man, this is a little frustrating. And let's try something else. And, you know, I remember this exact moment right here. I was like, I got it. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm going to create like a spider looking character. Angela with mandibles and for eyes. And I was just kind of like I didn't know where to start. I didn't have any reference. But, you know, you just start from imagination and go from there. Now I'm not expecting you to draw these creatures. This is more of a observation lesson where you're just seeing it in action. Because you know what works for me may not work for you and what works for you might not work for me. But the principles are always going to be the same. Youngest lies. And to be honest, I wasn't even sure what they could do here, but I'm so invested that they couldn't stop. So you see how I kind of jumped up to that. Dr. Dewan looking here at or above, it was kind of a distraction, but it's also a way for me to alleviate my anxiety. Start drawing some lines and some other sketches and it takes the stress away a little bit. So if you like, his point where I can erase, I've established the other parameters in the basic information that I would need. Now I'm just going to come back and fill in the blanks. Rinse, wash a little bit more flair to the eyes. It's time not just making them circles and making them look a little angry eyeballs in there. I'm not really sure yet. But we'll see. One thing that you can see from an all I'm falling is I'm constantly working, constantly moving the principal, not really stopping to think too much. I feel when you do that, you kind of lock up the gears and you slow yourself down, you get out of the flow. Really important thing for artists, whether you're a senior or a painter or sculpture or comic book artist, whatever the case may be. It's really important to get into flow, the flow state. What is the flow state? Watched my other courses. You've heard me talk about it. It's a state of being where you've let go. You trusted the process, right? You're, you're no longer consciously forcing the pencil. You're kind of it's like Avatar, right? Remember the movie Avatar where they plug in their tails to the creatures and they're able to connect BOM, like how you are with the pencil or your musical instrument, or when you're driving a car, or a lot of times we get into flow state. It's when the subconscious mind becomes a little bit more engaged than the conscious mind. Conscious mind tends to take a back seat and allows things to unfold. Now your conscious mind is still there, but it's more observational. It's a really cool place to be. The best athletes go there. You always hear about in the zone or in the flow state. It's a real place in the best way to get there. Just dive into something that you really enjoy doing. Something that you will do every single day. And to the point where you don't have to force it to happen. You just are so excited to see what happened. They started just allowing it to happen. It's not really a decision. When you get into flow state. It's more of a reaction or response. It's a response to you trusting the process. A lot of times when I'm not drawing to teach, but I'm drawing from my self. Timer will just fly by. And it could be 23.4 h. I might not have even had a drink of water and all that. I might just have my headphones playing my favorite songs. And the time just kind of blazes by work. I feel like I'm standing still. But by the time I snap out of it and simply aware, I'm always amazed at how much time has passed. And then we'll look at my art. And there has been a time in jokey, there's times where I'm I'm asking myself, did I do that? Well, how did I come up with that? Because honestly, it wasn't part of the agenda. Like you can sure. Tell yourself to go. You're all Spider-Man swinging off a building in, kicking king pin in the stomach or something. But your rendition of that, you're way that you draw that if you do it consciously, might look a little forced and stiff. But if you can get to the point where you're just allowing the process, you've given the instructions to your subconscious mind. Now you're just allowing it to take place. I'm going to tell you, it's unbelievable. Sometimes. I still feel like I'm just scratching the surface of all this stuff. Here. I am just kinda going over some of the details and I don't know what this character is. Just kind of premium on the win, on a whim and went with it. And hey, you know what, it looks like a creature. Mission accomplished. I'm happy with it. Doesn't have to be perfect. Yeah. What else can I do this? I think I'm jumping around the other sketches. That means I'm getting close to finished. Here. I am just kinda tightened enough and you probably do this yourself. Now I'm like, alright, well, I do with this one. I wasn't very happy with the outcome. Okay, make it look a little bit more Monster as well. Let's erase, Let's see what we can come up with. What do I have in the eye and begun bulging. Go along with that. Pops out a little bit more. No pun intended. But it does stand out. I remember when I was in high school and I used to draw a lot. I always draw these like crazy eyes popped out like that. Maybe just from watching too much movements can be or something. But it was fine. It just creates that wants to ask what gives it that little eccentric detail? Now I think I'm just thickening up the wrong here. This is just, I would just consider, consider this stage, the ring during this stage. So we're almost finished. We're coming to an end here. We've got about another minute, minute and half-life. So I hope that this course helped you. If you want me to do more courses in this kind of a style, let me know. This is kind of a Beta for me. I just wanted to try this method because I felt if I were the one who is learning, this is how I would want to just kinda observing and listening to the artists that process the thought process and cons of a kind of answers your questions for you. I couldn't get into the basic 123 or whatever, but I really want you to see my thought process, how I approach things in how I attack the problems and find solutions. So I really hope that this helped you please let me know. Leave a review or when you do your project. And you know, you can, you can kinda show me what you've learned. And I'm really proud of you if you've made it this far into the video. With today's attention being in short as it is. It's miraculous. So this shows me that you are very serious as an artist. And I really wish you the best. I will be working on more courses for you. I'll see you in the next one. Until then, just keep going