Learn to Draw Action Heroes Read online

  2 ADD THE JAW AND EARS

  Draw the jawline as a basic rounded wedge shape. We are going to change the proportions a bit from the other exercises and give this character a more animated look. So make the ears rather large this time.

  3 SKETCH THE FEATURES

  Use the horizontal line to place the eyes. Instead of placing the nose halfway between the eyes and chin, this time draw it closer to the eyes. Doing so scrunches up the face a bit. Now draw a larger mouth shape with the character grinding his teeth. Draw the eyebrows, curving down the larger middle brow area. This is the most telling feature. Also draw in some tiny pupils to further illustrate the intensity of the glare in his eyes.

  4 ADD THE HAIR

  Gently erase your sketch lines and clean up the line work. Draw the lines near the cheeks so that we can more clearly see the grimace he is making. Draw the lines for the teeth and gums. When people get really mad they tend to show more teeth just like animals do, so be careful! Now draw in the shape of the hair. You can try to make the hair look angry with sharp lines but if that doesn’t work, just make it look messy.

  5 REFINE THE FEATURES

  Draw the details of the face more clearly using thicker lines to make more of an impact. Make the lines in the middle of the brow really pointed and add more lines around the bridge of the nose. Look in the mirror when you make an angry face, and you will notice the skin bunches up in those areas.

  6 ADD FINAL DETAILS

  Now you can add hunched shoulders and a clenched fist and finish the illustration with color. With some refinement you can draw lots of angry people. He looks ticked! Someone stole his lunch money and now he is out to give them a knuckle sandwich.

  Drawing Expressions: Scared

  In this lesson you will learn to draw a different expression: scared. There are lots of degrees to the intensity of this expression, but for now you will do a basic fearful look.

  1 DRAW A BASIC HEAD SHAPE

  Create a basic head shape like this one so that we can focus on the features and expression in the following steps.

  2 MARK THE MEASUREMENTS

  Draw out the line measurements the same way you did in the previous exercises. Just remember that the eyes line up to the top of the ears, the nose sits around the bottom of the ears, and the eyes are spaced equal to one eye’s width, which also gives you the approximate width of the nose. The mouth is around the width of the middle of the eyes. The mouth starts and ends at the middle of each eye. Generally the ends of the mouth line up to the pupils. You can vary these proportions based on style and character types.

  3 SKETCH THE FEATURE SHAPES

  Now start to draw those fearful features. In my opinion, the things you must get right in this expression are the eyes. They should be very widely opened, with the eyebrows tilted back and extended upward. This is the human reaction to danger. We instinctively open our eyes as wide as possible to take in all the surrounding information. Neat, huh? Notice that I extended the jawline a bit further down. I left the previous mark in the form of a dotted line to show you the difference. When the mouth opens further, the jawline drops so make room for the change of the mouth shape. Draw the mouth slightly open. This will reinforce the look of disbelief and confusion.

  4 REFINE THE FEATURES

  Draw the iris of the eyes. They are one third the width of the eye, but to add to the fear factor, show the whole thing. You won’t see the white on the top and bottom of the iris unless the character is exhibiting an extreme emotion like fear or surprise. Also, make the pupil tiny to reinforce this look.

  5 DRAW THE HAIR

  Draw the hair shape. It’s best to leave this detail for the end or it can distract from getting the expression just right. This way the hair and final sketch lines become much easier to focus on.

  6 ADD FINAL DETAILS

  Give it one final pass to clean up and finalize your line work. Add crosshatching, shading and heavier line work to the hair and mouth area. And there you have it: a girl that is scared of spiders. Can you blame her?

  CHAPTER 2

  SUPERHERO BODIES

  In this chapter you will learn how to construct the superhero body. You will learn about gesture drawing, proportions, drawing in the anatomy and refining the artwork. These are the steps that I use to create characters every day. Breaking down the work into these stages will help you to draw complex characters more quickly and easily. Practice these studies every day to help them become second nature in your workflow.

  Gestures

  Practice the Basics

  Drawing gestures is an extremely important skill for any comic book artist. You must first learn how to capture the form with basic lines and shapes. Focus on the action line of the body (i.e., the flow in which the body or parts move).

  Try Complex Forms

  You will need to practice the complex forms as well. Strange and unfamiliar poses will give your mind a workout and make you less likely to draw static boring shots.

  Action Lines

  With practice, you will start to fit more information in with your gestures such as foreshortening and action. Notice in the first two examples that the action line is relatively straight but still helps to convey the movement in those shots. In the third shot a character hangs upside down. This is another great exercise to do. By forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and drawing the figure upside down, it changes your perspective on the forms and forces you to study them further.

  Draw Quickly

  Gestures should be quick and expressive. Start with as few lines as possible, focusing on a quick representation of the forms. Sweeping lines work very well for the body and its movements.

  Do Timed Sketches

  As you begin to feel more comfortable with the process, start to add more hints of detail during the next stage of your drawing. Practice timed drawings. Try drawing your poses in intervals of ten-minute, five-minute and even one-minute sketches. Doing timed sketches then slowly reducing the amount of time for the sketches will help you to build speed and confidence. You will have a better understanding of what you can complete in a certain amount of time, which you must know if you are going to do client work.

  You will be amazed at what you learn about the body in action with timed sketches. By adding in more information, your pictures will attain more of a mannequin style. Continue to fill up those sketchpads. Hundreds if not thousands of these little sketches will lead to your artistic greatness!

  Practice Movement

  Practice drawing the body engaged in various movements. Study from life but then exaggerate a little or a lot. Remember that we are drawing comics here, so we really want to push our poses to the limit.

  Drawing Proportions: Male

  In this lesson we will study the proportions of our superhero characters. First we’ll study the different looks you can get by varying the character’s height by the amount of heads tall he or she may be.

  Normal: This character is seven and a half heads tall. This is the standard height of a normal male character. Aside from the physique, there is nothing too special about this guy.

  Super: This character is eight heads tall and already looks a lot more dynamic in stature. Notice the longer legs and the slightly wider shoulders. Small changes like these add up. Because the head size remains the same, the character looks bigger and stronger by comparison.

  Superhero: With the character at nine heads tall, he is truly more powerful. Bigger shoulders and limbs signify his strength. This guy could lift a house and not break a sweat!

  Drawing Proportions: Female

  Females aren’t usually as tall as males, but you can still change their physique to suit your character style. You can add more or less musculature to any of these poses and make the female look much stronger.

  Normal: Notice that the woman at seven heads tall appears to be on the shorter side. But that’s only by comparison. She is actually much closer to the norm than the other two.

  Super: At seve
n and a half heads tall, she starts to look more heroic. She has longer legs for more kicking power and a longer arm reach to deliver a ka-blam of a punch!

  Superheroine: At eight heads tall, there is no doubt that you don’t want to mess with this lady. She is large enough to beat up the entire football team and still make it home in time for dinner.

  Drawing Arms: Male Arms Flexing

  In this lesson you will draw the muscular male arm. You know, “The guns!” You can’t have superheroes without big powerful arms, so let’s get to it.

  1 DRAW THE GUIDELINES

  First draw a basic guide to show where the forms will go. Draw circles for the joints and lines for the bones. It’s very simple and straightforward. This helps you to think only of the distance and therefore the proportions of the arm. The wrist to the elbow should be about the same distance as the elbow to the shoulder.

  2 BUILD THE ARM STRUCTURE

  Draw in cylinder shapes for the upper and lower parts of the arm. Draw a large circle for the shoulder for now to help you think about the shapes in a three-dimensional space. The hand can be drawn as a block or wedge-like shape with smaller cylinders for the fingers. Notice I drew the shapes as dimensional as possible by drawing through the other objects. This again is a way to think of the drawing as three-dimensional. Keep the shapes basic at this point of the drawing.

  3 SKETCH THE ANATOMY

  Gently erase your construction lines and begin to add in the organic shapes of the anatomy. There are no quick work-arounds to good anatomy. Study it and study it often. Focus on where the muscles start and where they end. Muscles go over and under other muscle groups, so keep that in mind when drawing your shapes. And keep straight lines to a minimum when drawing anatomy. They may add style but too many will just look plain wrong.

  4 REFINE THE LINES

  Gently erase your line work again, and this time refine the lines with more definition. Add line weight and clean up any spots that look wrong. Don’t worry about perfection; there is no such thing. Clean, confident lines will always improve your piece though.

  5 DRAW THE SHADOW SHAPES

  Outline the shapes of shadows. Try to picture how the light might wrap around the anatomy of the arm. Make sure not to trace each muscle separately and in doing so create too many segments in the arm. Try combining some of the areas, showing small breaks or bends in the shadows. Consider what percentage of the arm you want to be in shadow. In this case, I thought the arm should be 20 to 25 percent in shadow.

  6 ADD FINAL DETAILS

  With the shadow shapes in place, add the line work to shade the arm. Think of these lines like gradients from light to shadow. Try to round out the muscles even further as you crosshatch. Bending the crosshatched lines with the shape of the anatomy is a good way to create a look of depth. Lots and lots of practice is the key to doing it right!

  Drawing Arms: Male Arms Pointing

  In this lesson you will draw the inside of the male muscular arm. It’s the old, “Which way to the beach?” pose. We have all struck this pose at one time or another, right?

  1 DRAW THE GUIDELINES

  Draw the pose with the same line and circle method used in the previous lesson. Think of this as the bones under the muscles, and at this stage just focus on the length and direction of each section of the arm and hand. Notice the relationship from the wrist to the shoulder. Also notice the shape of the base of the hand from this angle. They are both triangular. Taking notice of shapes like these makes your drawings more consistent.

  2 BUILD THE ARM STRUCTURE

  Draw the cylindrical shapes. Think of a mannequin or marionette. Keep it simple. At this point, think only about proportions and direction of the segments. Also be open to changes at any stage of this process. Correcting things early on will save you lots of time and heartache later.

  3 SKETCH THE ANATOMY

  Gently erase your lines and start to draw the curvature of the anatomy. Notice the way that each area tapers as it meets the next. The shoulder tapers as it meets the upper arm, and the upper arm tapers as it meets the lower arm and so forth. Also notice where I changed the shape of the anatomy from the initial mannequin stage. I dropped the shoulder down. The basic construction is only meant to be a guide, so never hesitate to make changes if you see something that could be better.

  4 REFINE THE LINES

  Gently erase your guidelines and begin to refine the anatomy. This time give more line weight to the drawing as you add to it. You can also start to draw veins to add to the depth and realism of the drawing.

  5 DRAW THE SHADOW SHAPES

  Draw the shapes of shadows for the muscles. If you are working with a freelance artist who will ink your drawing, make sure to sketch small x’s marking the shadows so they can read the artwork more clearly. You don’t necessarily have to do this step if you are inking your own work, but it doesn’t hurt to get in the habit just in case. Then you’ll always remember where the shadow should be filled in.

  6 ADD FINAL DETAILS

  Fill in the shadows and add crosshatching and line weight to start to make the artwork pop off the page. Notice how the veins cast small shadows of their own on one side. And how they catch light even in the shadow of the arm. This is more stylized, but it gives the appearance of depth. Overall this is a very stylized arm drawing but that is the fun of comics—not everything has to be entirely accurate!

  Drawing Arms: Outer Female Arms

  In this lesson you will draw the female arm. There are a few subtle differences to notice when drawing the arm of a woman or girl.

  1 DRAW THE GUIDELINES

  Start by drawing the lines to define the distance between the upper arm, forearm, hand and fingers. This doesn’t have to be perfect. It just provides a guide to get started. Notice that the lines for the upper arm and forearm are roughly the same size at this angle.

  2 BUILD THE ARM STRUCTURE

  Draw the cylinder shapes over your skeleton-like lines. Make sure to have the forearm taper toward the wrist. On the female arm, the wrist can get pretty slender so it is good to start to draw that in even at this stage.

  3 SKETCH THE ANATOMY

  Gently erase your line work, and draw in the organic shapes of the arm. When drawing the female arms, you can use longer sweeping curves whereas the male arms tend to be more angular and abrupt. Notice that the fingers are almost the length of the palm portion of the hand. Some stylized comic art ventures far past those proportions. As long as the fingers are thin and taper toward the tips, they will generally read well.

  4 REFINE THE LINES

  Gently erase one more time and clean up your lines. Notice that we will use little to no shadows and less heavy line weight to finish off the arm. This all helps to create the effect of a softer, more feminine arm. The more lines and shading you add, the more defined the arm will look. But it can quickly become too much. Oftentimes when drawing the female characters in comics, less is more. Don’t forget to add the pretty fingernails!

  Try More Poses

  Here are some arm poses to practice with. Draw them often and with as many variations as you can think of to really memorize the forms. Look at your own arm or photo references and keep practicing.

  Drawing Arms: Inner Female Arms

  In this lesson you will draw another female arm. This time the pose is from the other side. It’s best to understand these basic forms before working on more complex poses with foreshortening.

  1 DRAW THE GUIDELINES

  Draw the lines and circles to get the basic structure in place. Notice that the knuckles of the hand and fingers are not straight but rather form more of an arc. This concept is important to remember when drawing hands, and this will be covered in more detail later in the book.

  2 BUILD THE ARM STRUCTURE

  Draw cylinders over the basic structure lines in a three-dimensional form. This helps convey the direction that the limb is moving within the space, and also helps you to better visualize your drawings for the next stage.


  3 SKETCH THE ANATOMY

  Gently erase the previous step and draw in the organic lines. Use sweeping lines to convey the female form. Sketch the lines at this stage to best work out the proportions.

  4 REFINE THE LINES

  Gently erase your lines and finalize the drawing. Add in little bits of crosshatching and use line weight to give the arm some depth.

  Male vs. Female