Yesterday I was all gung-ho to continue doing sketches of cartoony characters and examine the relationship between shape drawing and gesture drawing, but as I was looking for reference tonight I came across this great French graphic novel called Daffodil about vampires. So I went back to doing a comic page.
Tonight I only took photos after finishing stage 3 (all the details) - but I think I will go back to photographing each step as I complete it for the blog starting tomorrow. Even though I am drawing for myself, taking the photo helps me define the end of each step with a clean break. The nice thing about having the distinct stages, is that it allowes me the chance to try and correct 'errors' each time.
At each point I look for different elements of the drawing and this helps me notice different problems in my drawing. For example, sometimes when I finish stage 1 gesture - and then try and apply volumes (cubes,cylendars) to the figures - I find some of the porportions no longer work as well. Limbs and body parts may be too long or too short,etc.. I try and correct these problems at this second stage. The final stage - allowes me to push the forms further beyond the basic forms and into the final design. For example if you look at the first panel on the last row - the close up of the dracula character, you can see his head is not a perfect sphere. Nor is it an exact egg shape. It tapers at the bottom and really bulges out in the middle, then rounds out at the top.
I stayed with pencil to complete all 3 stages, but at the end I had about 9 minutes left, so I started going over some of the panels with ball point pen. I was using a very dull pencil and didn't feel like looking for the sharpener. Tomorrow I will be sure to keep the sharpener handy -so I can finish the drawing (all 3 stages) a bit more cleanly. To make this work, I draw stage 1 (gesture) very lightly. Stage 2 - volumes a bit darker, but still quite lightly and then for the final design (detail) stage I press down for a darker line. Hopefully tomorrow this will be clearer
All in all - I found working from this book a load of fun, and I spotted several other pages that I would love to do -so expect to see at least 3 or so more pages from Daffodil coming up.
