Does Whatever a Spider Can!

I know that I'm supposed to be doing part 2 of my "process" post but it's creeping on 11 o'clock here and I want to get my run in for the evening before it gets too late.

Doing these helped me learn a LOT. I tried to push the lighting here, going for some rather dramatic uplighting (something I've never tried before) on Spider-man and Kraven. I pulled off a couple of really nice moments here and there and I'm looking forward to trying some new lighting solutions in the coming weeks.

These are probably the last of my character boards applying Bruce Timm's design theories for the time being. It's been a really enriching experience and given me the confidence to draw dynamically when needs be. While the stiffness of my old poses still lingers in place, I'm a million miles ahead of where I was at the beginning of January. I'm very proud of my progress and I hope you all have enjoyed seeing these explorations as much as I've enjoyed doing them.

Breaking down the process... (Part 1)

Today and tomorrow's posts will see me breaking down my artistic process. I know that some people are interested in other artist's workflows (myself included) so I thought I'd share in case there are people who read this that might be too.

ALSO

These are just my personal opinions... I'm not saying this is RIGHT or THE WAY to work, it's just how I get down.

As is common practice, I start out by pencilling. This is probably my least favorite part of creating finished art. I think the pencil is a boring tool and creating lines with it is about as fun as eating deep fried cell phone batteries. When doing my pencils, I'm not really concerned about having a "super-tight" image. I like to keep things at least a little messy and rough as this forces me to "ink" and "embellish" instead of slavishly replicating the lines that I made in pencil.

After I've got some pencils I'm happy with, I move onto warming up with ink. When I warm up, I usually warm up to one of Miles Davis' electric tunes, "Recollections" or "He Loved Him Madly" being two particular favorites. These songs also clock in at 19 and 35 minutes (respectively), allowing me plenty of time to get it in gear. During my warm-up, I make lines ONLY with my brush until the song has ended. I think about what I'm going to need to do and at times try to mimic or play along with the music with my ink lines. When I believe that I'm prepared to "think in ink" I get my drawings out and start going to work.

When inking in my sketchbook, I usually start with the easier drawings, the ones with shorter lines and less going on. I do this because if I'm still not 100% warmed up, it won't show as much. When I'm feeling more confident, I'll move onto drawings with longer lines and more going on.

When I'm inking, I try to keep things as spontaneous as possible while also maintaining a certain degree of grace. Creeping along with the brush can be necessary at times, but lines that are bold and made quickly come off as more confident and in turn are more visually pleasing... at least to me.

Also, I'm not quite sure how he stumbled upon my little blog, but one of my favorite writers/artists Ty Templeton was nice enough to link one of my drawings on his wordpress site and subsequently make my day. I highly recommend you go check out his work... the link is below.

http://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/

That's all I've got for today. Tomorrow I'll put up the finished inks, talk a little about white out and also go through my coloring process.

In a Silent Way

It's funny what happens when you re-visit a drawing a day later and decide to take it somewhere completely different...

The Commish!

As I wind down Bruce Timm study time here, I'm going to be focusing more on people who don't wear capes and outlandish costumes as that's probably what I'm going to be spending most of my time drawing in the future.

For the record, I think the one of Gordon mid-stride is one of the most ridiculous and poor things I've drawn recently. That being said, I'm pretty happy with the rest so one bad egg isn't the end of the world right!?

Harley and Ivy (Interlude)

I haven't gotten around to scanning my last animal drawing so I'm going to post these instead.

Coloring is coming more and more naturally as the days progress. Figuring out the light source is something that I look forward to as a challenge and I'm excited to keep working at it. I think I've got about a week left of this before I start dissecting one artist's work a week for the month of February. After that, it's back to making comics!

Gorillaz on my Mind (Blade II OST)

Anyone ever hear that version of 19-2000 by Gorillaz with Redman rapping over it!?

No worries, you didn't miss much.

Anyways, here we have... a Gorilla.

I recently re-read Klaus Janson's book about inking and tried to keep things as spontaneous and fluid as possible as he and Frank Miller suggest. This drawing was done almost exclusively with "the chopper" (my WN Series 7 #2 brush that I've made a point of decimating) with only a little bit of *frowns* pen thrown in around the brow.

The crop on the original was a little tight in retrospect so I expanded the canvas in Photoshop. With that minor correction made, I can say I'm pretty darn happy with this one.

Three Day Segue (Rhymes Like Dimes)

I'm going to take a break from the Batman stuff for a few days here and post some drawings I've been doing of different animals as of late.

While I'm happy with this drawing, I'm trying to steer clear of this kind of rendering nowadays as it's just too time consuming. However, I do value drawing like this as both a technical exercise and as a way to really cut lose (as counter-intuitive as that last bit may sound).

The cat I drew here is named Sadie. I'm not usually a cat person, (they have an annoying habit of jumping up on tables when you're trying to draw) but this one doesn't do that so we're cool.

Pronounced RAYSH!

Today I tackled my all-time favorite Batman villain, Ra's Al Ghul!

I actually did these drawings before I did the Two-Face ones but I knew the Two-Face ones would take less time to color so those got posted first!

These were a lot of fun. I think I've gotten fairly comfortable with the style here too as I haven't had to do any direct copies of other people's art since the Catwoman page (though I'm sure there's an unconscious swipe in there somewhere). I also think I'm getting the hang of the whole coloring thing a lot better and I'm forcing myself to confront the whole lighting thing head-on (another one of those things I wish I was better at).

Photoshop unfortunately dulled the colors a little bit in exporting but eh... you get the idea.

Anddddddddddddddd I'm back!

I got my new printer/scanner combo yesterday! As this is the case, I'll be going back to updating this on a daily basis.

Today I took a crack at Two-Face. I think this is probably some of my strongest line work and the drawings themselves are pretty pleasing too for the most part. I'm going to be coloring all of these from here on out as coloring isn't something I've done a lot of and I'd like to be better at it. Here's to!

Rev up your Harley?

I didn't quite get around to Ivy yesterday, but I did take a few cracks at Harley.

I skipped the previously obligatory observational copy of Ty Templeton's work when doing these and decided to just go for it. While I did end up referencing some of Bruce Timm's model sheets to see how her facial expressions work, these are otherwise all original drawings.

Unfortunately, the regular updating of this blog is going to come to an end for now. The scanner that I've been using I no longer have access to and that makes it hard to post things. I'm looking into a printer scanner combo however and hopefully I'll have access to that sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Selina!

Selina who?

Selina Kyle, that's who!

Catwoman has always been my favorite supervillain but I'm almost positive that this is the first time I've drawn her (again, females and super-heros have been HARD to draw until very recently).

Things are a little stiff here in places, (as my one of inspirations/instructors Terry Beatty was nice enough to point out) and I'm looking to push the dynamism/line of action in my next round of drawings. There are some moments I'm fond of though, and I think it's safe to say that my brush line is getting better everyday.

Next up... Harley and Ivy.

Ms. Barbara Gordon

Females have always been hard for me to draw (and super-heros even more so). As this is the case, I figure there's no better way to overcome this problem than by tackling it head on!

Unlike previous posts where at least half of the drawings have been observational copies, here I've made a concerted effort to come up with original illustrations utilizing the information I gained from doing only one observational copy (the one of Batgirl in mid-jump on the far left side of the page is another one of Ty Templeton's).

Hands (Remix)

A couple of months ago, I did an exercise similar to this, albeit in a more realistic fashion. Here I'm REALLY trying to trim away at the excess and I had some success.

Again, these studies are all observational copies from Ty Templeton's "How to Draw Batman" and Walt Stanchfield's "Drawn to Life" or original drawings by yours truly.

New Year, New Goals, New Plan, New Work!

As I write this, we're eight days into 2011. I've officially finished college and I'm now living in the "real world". As this is the case, I figure it's way past time that I get "real" about my goal of becoming a talented and successful cartoonist.

I've decided to devote at least the next two months exclusively to study, observation, and writing. This blog will until further notice become a sketch blog that will be updated once a day with what I'm doing. In addition to drawing, I will also begin to write and plan my debut graphic novel. At the end of two months, I'll do a couple of ramp-up short stories to get the "comic" part of my brain going (one of which may be a Batman story!??!!?) and after that, I'm going to start focusing on my graphic novel which I'll submit to publishers and also (hopefully) serialize online too!

My first drawings done in the new year are above. I'm currently working through Ty Templeton's "How to Draw Batman" and the first volume of Walt Stanchfield's "Drawn to Life" making observational copies and original drawings to help me attain simplicity and fluidity in my work. I'm also trying to get my brush game on the level of folks like Charles Burns (no small goals this year as per usual)! Things have been looking a little better every day and I'm excited to be cartooning again.

I hope you all enjoy witnessing the journey as much as I'm going to enjoy embarking on it.

Here's to!

George Folz