Hello Fellow Artists!
In today’s post I wanted to share some of my latest step by step tutorial sheets for you to practice with. If you are anything like me you have learned a tremendous amount with these types of drawings over the years.
I have always had to seek out various art books and tutorials since I have no formal art education to speak of. I am a self taught artist but I owe so much to all the awesome content out there!
Where my Love for Comic Art Tutorials Began
For me it all started with Wizard magazine years ago. I was so excited for each new tutorial to come out so I could level up my drawing skills and one day become a professional comic artist.
Years later, I now share step by step tutorials as an online instructor for comic art. Didn’t see that coming but I am extremely grateful all the same.
I am sure 99% of you know about Wizard magazine but in case you don’t, here it is. They are filled with so much eye candy and I really need to go back and collect them all. The tutorials alone make it worth it in my opinion.
Later it became books like, “How to Draw the Marvel Way” and all the books by Burne Hogarth. Books that I still study to this day.
Making these step by step illustrations allows me to give back to the comic art community that I love being part of. I hope you continue to find them to be a helpful resource!
If you find this post to be useful please share it to help me continue creating this type of content. Thanks in advance and now let’s get drawing!
Tutorial #1 – Drawing an Arm Pose – Starting with Basic Forms
For this one we will draw a muscular arm in a supinated position. Supination means that the palm is facing upwards.
Start with some basic forms to establish the proportions and orientation of the arm.
Next, draw the fingers with thin lines and dots to represent the knuckles. Make sure that the knuckles curve from one another and are not perfectly straight across.
Hands require a lot of practice so make sure to draw plenty of hand gestures with simplified sketches and this area of the work will get easier as you go.
After you are done with the base forms you can then begin to redraw a stylized arm over the top.
I push the opacity back on the previous layers and then redraw the clean lines with a bit more patience.
I then add the shapes of shadows with a light grey and then begin to render the cross hatching.
For the cross hatching I start from the shadow side and render tapered lines towards the light. By doing this and keeping the underlying form in mind I can add depth to the illustration with a bit of style as well.
Tutorial #2 – Legs in a Jumping Pose
For this first one I will share a step by step sheet and a time lapse video so that you have both options to work with. I practice comic style legs a lot. Mainly because there are so many angles and variations to learn to draw.
That and the fact that I also like to dabble with different rendering styles. So lots of things to imagine and play around with, even with specific parts of the body.
For this one I will start with a rough sketch of the pose. Something that I feel has the gesture and style that I am looking for.
People always ask me, do you start with a stick man, cylinders, or gesture? I start with whatever feels right for the area that I am drawing
If I am more confident at a particular part of the illustration, I generally go right to gesture drawing.
If I am struggling with the area then I add cylinders to figure out the form and the perspective. The “Stick-Man” approach is just to figure out the proportions.
Here is a video where I narrated the process on drawing these legs. Enjoy!
What’s Up with All the Body Parts?
So just in case you are wondering why I share lots of pieces or body parts, it is because I like to do localized studies.
I have always found this to be a great way to learn and sort of “zero in” on the parts that I am struggling with.
There are times I fill up an entire page with sketches of the legs, arms, eyes, ears, torsos, etc. It always teaches me something and the sheer volume of drawings really do add up and develop our skills.
This same approach applies to everything else. Drawing sections of buildings, facial expressions, gesture drawings, composition, and so on.
I hope that all makes sense and let’s continue on!
Tutorial #3 – Drawing Hair on a Female Character
There are tons of different hair styles to practice but I use a similar break down for most of them. Let me show you how easy this can be!
Start by drawing the hair line. This helps us to have a container and keeps the hair aligned.
Next draw in a hair shape. It should be asymmetrical and have an organic feeling to it but also keep it simple for now. We can and will add more details as we go.
For the third step in the illustration above you can draw the flow and direction of the hair. Avoid being two aligned or repetitive with the directional lines. If you want the hair to look organic then it needs to have curves and variation.
Now we can start to render the interior forms of the hair. Again, think with variation. Hair typically has various levels of thickness and volume. Try using “S” curves and at the end you can roll the edges up even more. These ( Pink Lines ) are called “Beauty Lines.”
Then for the final stage we an ink the work. I am adding stronger highlights on the top and thinner ones at the bottom and underside of the hair shapes.
For this style of rendering I like to use a bit of a Zig-Zag effect for the highlights. It works well for comics and you can draw it at pretty much any size with a bit of practice.
Try this same approach with different hair styles and see if you can make it work!
Tutorial #4 Drawing a Creepy Arm Pose
For this next one I will show you how I draw a creepy arm. I like drawing characters like Venom, Carnage, Sabertooth, etc. So these types of drawings are fun to practice.
I will let you work through this one without hitting you over the head with the same steps.
Here is another Youtube video of the process. I narrated this one for you so I go into much more of the thought process as I render the line art.
So as you can see, I really enjoy making these types of step by step tutorials. It allows me to improve my art while helping other artists. Win-Win baby! 😉
The crazy thing about this journey is that by making all these art videos and tutorials I was able to get my work published in my very own How-To-Draw book!
So hopefully you see that if you put in the work and develop your skills good things happen. Sometimes it’s not exactly what we wanted or expected but often times it is exactly what we needed!
If you want to learn more you can check out my book, “Learn to Draw Action Heroes” here on Amazon – Click here!
If you want to learn more about drawing comic style art. I have courses on my website that walk you through the process step by step. Here is one on drawing stylized anatomy –
Check out this course…..Click here
Thank you for viewing my blog posts and more are on the way soon! Have an awesome day and good luck with your art! 🙂
Sincerely,
Robert A. Marzullo
Ram Studios Comics
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