Tag: drawing

  • Exercise: Solid Black, Patterns,Moody Characters

    Your assignment: Divide a piece of copier paper into 16 chambers but folding it twice long ways and twice short ways and then draw your Flair pen down the creases. Choose a character from the Face Jam exercise and copy it into the first panel on the left. Change the characters mood into its opposite in four frames. Repeat this with three other characters, getting all your simple line work done first, then go back and add patterns and solid black. This will take time and it is very good for your hand to practice making good solid blacks with a Flair. Don’t be tempted to get your solid blacks done faster by using Sharpie or a fatter black marker. The idea is to give your hand the practice it needs to do this with just a Flair pen. This is a good time to listen to some music or a podcast or playing a show in the background while you draw.

  • Two stages of a 20 minute black and white Daily Diary drawing.

    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