Figure doodles!

Here are some gesture drawing/ pose ideas for a reference shoot I want to do soon. I have been doing a lot of figure drawing lately and my work is improving quite a bit I think. These are basically “notes” taken off of drawings, paintings, pinups or photos that I want to shoot my own reference for in more natural conditions.

A lot of these poses are from a Gil Elvgren book (talk about a true master), he’s such a great pin up artist. I plan to take photos using these poses but from different angles as well. I also plan to start painting again soon (we’ll see how that goes! Lol).

Spartacus Character Studies

Here are more studies from my sketchbook for my Spartacus pages. There are many things that I am trying to accomplish with these pages. First, I want to capture the characters more than the likenesses of the actors portraying the characters.

I want to get a more natural look with my drawings, my friend Rachel pointed out that I tend to draw a lot of sharp edges and elongated, rectangular heads. Once she told me this I really started seeing it more in my art. To rectify this, I am forcing myself to start out with circles and ovals in the initial sketch as opposed to squares and rectangles.

Layouts!

This is basically how I write comics. They start out as a series of thumbnails and then I make rough layouts where I work out any problems, look for tangents and tighten up character design. Pacing, time elapse and clarity are all very important to comics (or any other media that tells stories visually), and this step is very crucial to good pages.

I tend to get drunk sometimes while doing layouts. I find that drinking helps relax your mind so that you can see the story in a different light. Often we get too wrapped up in seeing something one particular way and need to step back.

I like to reference great visual story tellers. Will Eisner is probably the king when it comes to sequential art, but you should also check out Darwyn Cooke, Becky Cloonan and Sarah Picelli. Another good source is Genndy Tartovski (from Dexter's Lab, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends). Particularly Symbionic Titan.