When I teach comics, one of the things I want my students practice right away is using a timer to get their simple line work done in about three minutes. I want them to draw something in the foreground, midground and back ground thinking about what is the closest to the viewer, what’s furthest, and what’s in the middle. Having a short amount of time to do this keeps our hands moving. The line work for a single frame three minutes. The most important thing is to concentrate on the line work and keep your hand in motion and asking yourself ‘what else could be the picture?’ Stop when the timer goes off and move on to the next frame.
Get the line work done on all four panels before adding tones. This should should be done in two minutes for each panel.
The assignment is to draw yourself as Batman in four scenes from your day in 20 minutes for seven consecutive days. You have to draw your entire body, head to boot. Batman is a good character to use because the silhouette is strong and the cowl, cape, gloves, little bat drawers and boots are all black, so they automatically give every panel something strong.
By setting the amount of time you have to draw each panel, you start to develop a pace, \. You learn how to move your hand to fit your drawing into the time and space you have. This is very good for you!
Materials: timer, composition notebook, flair pen
