How to Draw Like the Franchize!

Today I'm starting a brand new part of my site. The "How to" section. Every second Tuesday of the month I'll be posting a new "How to" piece to share a little of what I know about drawing dramatic figures.

quick gesture sketch

I figured that my first drawing should be of Superman cuz he is really fun for me to draw and I am most familiar with his look. Plus the tights make it easy to get the anatomy. Today's tools are photoshop CS5 and my wacom tablet. To begin I start with a blank layer and quickly rough in the gesture. This is really the most important stage. If you want to have a dynamic figure it all starts here. The best way to learn to make dynamic poses is to go out and study your favorite artists work and try to figure out how to create a quick gesture based on their art. it will take you a long way in trying to understand the figure in motion.

Squiggley Lines!

Next is the part that I like most... SQUIGGLEY LINES! This is where I find the right pieces of the puzzle and start to fill out my sketch. I really like to push proportion so here you can see that Superman's head is pretty small compared to his chest. I have similarly exaggerated his legs and arms. I have also decided to really play with foreshortening his arms to give the figure a sense of depth. A lot of artist have trouble with this at first, but it gets easier with practice. The trick is if something is close to you its big and if it's far away it's small. I take that a step further and say that if something is close it should be REALLY BIG and if it's far away then it's REALLY SMALL.

refining the art

Here I really get into his anatomy and defining his costume. I wouldn't necessarily encourage anyone to study the way I draw anatomy because my style is very exaggerated. I have done quite a bit of study and really put a lot of thought into how I push and pull muscle groups to get what I want.

Finished!

Last I go over everything and clean up the line work. I only keep the lines I like and get rid of the rest. Because I'm working in photoshop each step is on a different layer so I don't have to worry about erasing anything.  Next month COLORS!

Well, that's the end of my first lesson. Hope it was helpful. Thanks for stopping by!