The Art of Comic Book Drawing

More than 100 drawing and illustration techniques for rendering comic book characters and storyboards

Maury Aaseng, Bob Berry, Jim Campbell, Dana Muise, Joe Oesterle

• Publisher: Walter Foster Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781633228313
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

Wham! Pow! Bam! Kaboom! Learn everything you need to make your own comic books, superheroes, and story lines with The Art of Comic Book Drawing. Featuring step-by-step tutorials, helpful tips, and dozens of drawing and illustration techniques, aspiring cartoonists, graphic illustrators, and comic book artists will discover all of the basics, from creating characters to mastering features and expressions to bringing it all together with unique and interesting story lines. Veteran comic book artists teach you to draw basic cartoon characters, superheroes, villains, and more using simple, step-by-step drawing lessons. Once you get the hang of illustrating your favorite characters, you'll learn to draw action scenes, set up panels, add speech bubbles, and even learn the basics of cartoon and comic book word treatments. With approachable exercises and projects to guide you, The Art of Comic Book Drawing allows beginning artists to create their own comic books, step by step. This helpful guide also includes easy-to-use comic book templates so you can put your newfound skills to immediate use.

Building Comic Characters

Several stereotypes recur throughout the history of comics. These stereotypes are often interchangeable. The big guy in the center could easily be cast as a heroic giant or a monstrous hulk—we often see super-villains that are as heroic in stature as their good-guy counterparts. The combinations are endless—have fun mixing characters and attributes up in new and interesting ways!

PROPORTIONS

Establishing your character’s proportions is important. Artists often use a character’s head as a unit of measurement to establish the general body type. Most humanoid characters have roughly the same head size. For example, a typical hero measures 7 to 8 heads high; a teenage sidekick might be 51/2 heads high, while a child, or super-powered alien with childlike proportions, might be about 31/2 heads high.

At right is a typical superhero couple. You can see that the man is about 71/2 heads high, and the woman is about 7 heads high.

These guidelines aren’t rigid rules but a rough framework to help you create characters and keep them consistent from drawing to drawing. Much depends on your personal preference and what looks best for your style and character.

PLAYING WITH PROPORTIONS

At right are three figures with the same head size, but with bodies of different proportions. The figure on the left has heroic proportions of 71/2 heads high. He could pass for an average human and a super. The guy in the middle has typical child proportions—about 4 heads high. The last figure is 81/2 heads high. He could easily be seen as gigantic in proportion (when compared to the figure on the left). By himself he would make a very strong heroic figure.

DRAWING THE FIGURE IN SPACE

Drawing your heroes and villains in static poses probably isn’t something you’ll be doing in your comic—especially if you write comics with a lot of action! It’s important to practice drawing your characters from different angles and perspectives. The easiest way to visualize the figure in space is to use simple cylinders to draw the various parts of the body. The sketches below are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Tools & Materials
• Digital Illustration
• Drawing Basics
• Inking Techniques
• Creating Characters
• Bodies in Motion
• Villains
• Battles
• Building Comic Characters
• Adding Speech
• About the Artists
• Copyright