Alex Heizer

January 12, 2011 Comments | 6 notes | Text

Learning Volume & Space - Part 2

In my last tutorial I showed you a simple but effective method for improving your drawing skills and making your artwork better. Now I’ll show you how this applies to making better comics.

Since almost anything you’ll draw would be 3D in real life, once you can visualise what you’re about to draw as existing in space and taking up volume you can apply this to people, buildings, motorcycles, animals… you name it! A building is easy, all it is is a big box. Which, you just did. To do a building just do that again. But bigger!

Let’s get started. Click each image for a larger sized version.

Everyone tells you that the basic form of a head is either an egg shape or a circle with a box for the face mask (the group of the nose, mouth and jaw features). For comics and manga you’ll want to use the circle and box. Now that you’re in the habit of visualising in 3D, draw a sphere, or ball (instead of just a circle - which is flat), and sketch in the horizontal and vertical centerlines.
Still visualising the ball, draw in some “side” lines to indicate the sides of the head and face.
Draw the box for the face mask based on the width of the face you established in Step 2. At this point you should have a solid foundation for your character.
Begin adding features, starting with the eyes and hair. Just rough these in, you’ll come back to these in a minute. Then place the ears, nose and mouth quickly.
Start to define the jaw and cheeks based on your guidelines and facial features.
Sketch in the hair a bit more. You’ll notice it’s easier to create a sense of fullness in the hair now as you draw it wrapping around the head.
Complete the face as minimal or detailed as you like. Here’s two versions of a character using the same foundation, one manga style and one an American comics style.

Working this way, you’ll be able to easily draw any character in any position because of the strong foundation that you’ve practised. Try it with different shaped sphere and box combos to create different characters and see for yourself!