Week Seven: Manga??

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of manga-style art.  To be more specific, I really dislike manga-faces.  They seem distorted and uninteresting; take away colour and I find every face looks identical.  However, my local library has a huge selection of How To Draw Manga books, and I grabbed a few.  They had detailed instructions on drawing full-body characters, including a special section on hands, and so I grabbed them.  For one week at least, I'll be a manga artist.  Let's take a look:

First, let's laugh at the first two images.  I call the first one 'the gargantaur,' because this 'teenager' somehow ended up with the largest shoulders in the history of the world.  Seriously, I followed the instructions exactly, but I created an ogre.  It almost looks like I stopped trying on this one, and that's probably not far from the truth.  The middle image is much better, but it's such a ridiculous pose I can't take it seriously.  Who stands like this, honestly?

The final try isn't bad at all.  If we ignore the hands, this is probably my most well-proportioned and defined upper-body yet.  The flip-side is that the legs are among the worst I've done yet, but that's okay.  You'll notice that none of these three have any sort of shading: I was more focused on getting the outline than a finished project, especially for these three uninteresting poses.

Here are three much more interesting poses, and I spent probably twice as much time on any one of these than all three combined.  Collectively, the hands, faces and feet are all quite good (for me at least).  I begrudingly followed the manga-head advice with noses, but I refused to make the pointy, pentagon-style heads.  The middle character was shaded very roughly, similar to my wolf from last week, but I'm again surprised at the results (in a good way).  The 'karate girl' as the books calls it (though it's clearly kung fu) was supposed to teach my foreshortning, but I didn't make the front foot big enough.  Still quite happy with the result, though.

The big success, though, was the 'running girl.'  I love drawing capes, and I think this one turned out splendid.  I spent a long time on both the cape as well as the skirt, and both achieve that wavy, clothing look.  I'm most impressed with the hair, though.  This is easily my best attempt at hair yet; just compare it to the other two.  I really like hair, and I'm hoping I start to like drawing hair as much as I like drawing trenchcoats and capes.

Here are my hands.  Please note that the book only included the outline, not the shading or interior definition, which was somewhat disappointing.  My bottom hand (supposed to be a clenched first angled slightly up) suffers from bad shading, shading that turns it from hand to blob.  The middle fist is better.  The first hand isn't bad for a first attempt, and the final image is quite a valiant attempt at a difficult pose.


I have about six or seven different hands I want to still draw, but my manga session is now over.  I will never be known as an anime-artist.  That said, I found the manga-style steps to creating bodies involved less erasing than with the X-Men, mostly because of smarter guideline placement, and I like that.  As the three girl poses showed, I became much better with my proportions as the week went on.  When I eventually create an original character (with a cape and/or trenchcoat and long hair!), I'll probably follow the manga-build and use a realistic-style head.  I'm not near that now, though.  See you next week!

Week Six: Lions and Tigers and X-Men, Oh My

This week started off well but then seemed to fade.  This may be due to my work schedule, which consisted of nothing early in the week followed by three completely full days where I had to draw while asleep to fill my quota.  Note to self: change work schedule.  Anyway, onto the real show:

Clearly I'm still working from art books.  I've now finished on X-Men, mostly because I've drawn all my old favourite characters.  This week we have Gambit and Magneto.  Mag (the one on the right) was interesting because I experimented with the 'colour' scheme.  Traditionally he is red and purple, but those are hard to differentiate with only pencil (and it would require a lot more work).  Instead, I kept him mostly white and shaded everything else.  Again, it's interesting.  His left arm is hilariously small, but I don't care about arms; I mostly liked his cape.  That was fun.

Gambit on the left will likely find his way into a Hall of Fame shortly.  I really nailed this one.  The proportions are the closest I've ever drawn; his head looks fairly head-like; his hands aren't too terribly mangled.  But really, it's all about the trench-coat.  I could look at that thing all day.  Wonderful shading.  Whenever I get around to creating an original character, he should wear a trench-coat.  Or a cape.  Or both!  Epic clothing is epic.

With X-Men done, I went back to drawing animals, this time from a new book, one with more interesting poses. First we have a wolf, which I really love. With the exception of the initial body and head guidelines, I didn't erase anything.  It's not perfect, but it has a certain vitality that I've rarely seen pop from my pencil before.  I also experimented with the shading, using a new style, and it really worked.  It also only took about 20min, which absolutely amazed me.

I tried the same thing with my two cats, but I couldn't recapture the magic.  The lion looks completely flat, and worse, it appears to be malnurished.  Where's the strength?  I can't decide if the mane is decent or a tangled mess.  Don't get me started on the head.  Positive: the tail tuft, and the fact that any future lion has to be better almost by definition.

The tiger is slightly better.  Again, it doesn't have that majestic strength a big cat must have, but it's less flat, so that's an improvement.  The very front and very rear legs make me sad.  The head is okay, but something irks me about it.  And the stripes!  Why does my favourite animal have such a hard thing to draw??  I did better here than my first tiger a few weeks back, but I still nearly pulled my hair out.  Also, look at the grass, my very first attempt at a background.  Doesn't it add so much? =)

It's slightly sad: I wanted to devote today, Saturday, to drawing, but my efforts were largely wanting.  I guess I'll put the pencil down and come back at it tomorrow.  It's funny: two months ago I'd likely be thrilled at any of these drawings.  Anyway, I'll likely finish up with my library books (no choice: they're due next week), and then I'll go back to still-life.  Another week in the books!

Week Five: Superheroes, Go!

Good news!  I got a part-time job.  This is, in general, always better than the alternative.  The only drawback is less drawing time.  On three days this week I had to struggle hard to manage just 20min of sketching.  The other four days, though, were fairly productive.  Let's take a look:

Wow, X-Men! I went to the library and grabbed a few 'How-to-draw' books. I grabbed X-Men because they were a childhood icon and I need to draw full bodies at some point. It worked fairly well, I think. You'll notice that all of the drawings are outlined in black-pen. This is because of the huge amount of guidelines that needed to be erased, and it's easier to use pen and erase everything else than to manipulate an eraser around the lines I want to keep.

Wolverine looks good. His arms in the right-image aren't in proportion, but oh well. He looks much better in the second image, his head the only unfortunate part. There are LOTS of details here. Each drawing took 2+ hours, spread out across multiple sittings.

The final image is my first abandoned project. I spent three days trying to turn this into something good, and I just never liked it from the beginning. Rather than forcing myself to complete something I already dislike, I gave up. It felt good.

We've already met Joey before.  We also have Storm, again from X-Men.  You'll notice that the darks on her are very dark compared to my normal.  This is because I invested in some soft pencils.  That's about $15 now invested in this year-long challenge.  You'll also notice, if you look carefully, some pen slips.  I was very tired when I tried to outline Storm with my pen, and I accidentally inked a few spots that shouldn't have been.  Oh well.

At the bottom we have three separate anatomy studies.  The scan here doesn't show up that great.  Apparently studying anatomy is really important for artists.  I did this and didn't get too much out of it.  Then I drew a giant, bulging bicep.  Why?  Because if I ever draw my own portrait, I need to know how to make giant muscles.  Haha!  Joking.  Maybe.


Some decent work this week.  I find I'm erasing a lot less, which must be a sign of improvement.  It took five weeks, but I feel more confident when I sit down, pencil in hand.  I had more fun with superheroes than faces or animals, so I'll probably try them for another week and see what happens.  See you in seven days.