Finally completed my "comic clip" (analog version, color pencil on paper):

In the future I may do a "digitally remastered version".

Ready for a next project!

I'm working on character designs for both my upcoming comic project (about a young kid trying to make it as a guitarist...) and my WiP web application project for guitar students (https://fretshare.com).

To begin with, practice drawing various guitarists trying to find the style I want to go for:

My goal this month is to complete the character designs for my first one-page story (5 characters in total). I will be asking for feedback.

My stretch goal is to start penciling in the page.

So... I really liked the August prompt (Dragonfly) and the "drawing in ink" one... however I typically don't have enough spare time to work on a contest prompt within the month. But I had this idea buzzing in my head that I had to turn into an illustration. So here it is.

I'd love to get some feedback - as this is by far the most elaborate ink drawing I've ever made, I'd like to learn what things you would change in terms of lighting, composition and storytelling to improve the result. (In particular I'm focusing at the moment on black and white drawing with traditional ink.)

These are images from the assignment of the basic perspective course that consists of drawing a room from various angles. I find doing these exercises a lot of fun (coming up with different viewpoints), while making your visual brains work hard at the same time.

From within the closet:

From the window:

Hmm let's pretend the walls are made of glass:

My challenge this December is to finish my 4-page comic project, that's been dragging for a while. It's a "comic-clip", a song put into comic. I chose "Sultans of Swing" from the Dire Straits, one of my favourite bands from my youth.

Here are the two finished pages (photos from my mobile, not good quality). The technique is sepia color pencil (Caran D'Ache Prismalo).

Page 1 (hmm this is not the fully finished product, I have since completed the tree):

Page 3:

This is WiP pencil for page 2:

And these are thumbnails for page 4. On the left one version of the full page, on the right a rework of the bottom part of the page that I like much better.

This last summer I took Dave Malan's course on portrait drawing and I recommend it. What I found most useful for me was the emphasis on systematically approaching drawing from the larger shapes to the smaller ones and details at the end.

I had made myself a challenge of drawing a portrait a day on summer 2019, and repeated it again on August 2020 starting with Dave's course. The idea is 1-2h per portrait at most.

Here is a sample of the portraits I made, in chronological order. It feels great to see the progress that comes from continued practice.

Feedback is welcome!

Currently I'm working on illustrations with cartoony dragons. I am actually working on the way overdue "Dragonfly" prompt... In preparation for that I did a bookmark design for "St Jordi's day" which is a big celebration in Catalonia (the day of the book and the rose). This is for a contest at my son's school:

This is done with markers, ink (callibrated pen) and prismacolor color pens for the greens.

@Kyle-Tobey Yeah the door looks off because you used the wrong vanishing point. You should use the one on the left...

@Kevin-Longueil wow amazing textures!

Hi everyone!

I am Carles, from Barcelona (Catalonia). I joined SVS this past summer, but am only now starting to try and be more active in the forums, so I thought an introduction was in order.

My goal is not to become a professional illustrator, rather to improve my art and storytelling skills. I want to draw comics, and also add illustrations to my professional presentations and talks (I am a software engineer, currently freelancing). Besides attending a local atelier two hours a week, I am mostly learning by following various online courses, SVS being one of them.

One of the things I would love to find in the forums are fellow classmates (I was excited to see this was a common practice here) - I am following the foundations curriculum, will be starting level two around or after Xmas, and will be posting about it.

Ideally I'd also love to find other aspiring comic artists in my area to build a local community. We could eventually meet in person to share our learnings, self critique and provide mutual support and maybe work together in projects. Please contact me if you live nearby and like this idea!

Thanks for the comments and feedback so far, and hoping to be an active part in this community!

@Larue Hmm I will need to check that out, not sure it reached my corner of the world...

@Braden-Hallett said in Informal Clip studio demo for my SCBWI group:

Is there anything in particular YOU would want to learn about clip studio if you were to partake?

Yes... not necessarily Clip-studio-specific, but I'm interested in how you plan out your layers.
Also to what extent you rely on specific "digital world" helpers like stabilization, [perspective] grids...
And whether you manage reference within Clip studio (i.e. specific tools for it).

@Braden-Hallett thanks for the offer! I would be interested, however timezone differences may not make it possible for me to join live (I'm in Catalonia, on GMT+2).

I don't do much digital (yet) but I've been using ClipStudio and Krita. Both are great programs. (I lean more towards Krita of late because it's open source and can run on my Linux which is what I mostly use these days.)

Definitely interested in ClipStudio, comics, and also in learning about other people's processes.

I'm working on character designs for both my upcoming comic project (about a young kid trying to make it as a guitarist...) and my WiP web application project for guitar students (https://fretshare.com).

To begin with, practice drawing various guitarists trying to find the style I want to go for:

My goal this month is to complete the character designs for my first one-page story (5 characters in total). I will be asking for feedback.

My stretch goal is to start penciling in the page.

@ajillustrates "take a 10 minute break after 50 minutes of work to sketch" I love this idea, I will see if I can apply it myself! My job dynamics as a software engineer don't necessarily make this easy. Do you set yourself reminders/alerts to take breaks, or can you make it "just happen"?

@Shelley-James-0 I work as a freelance software engineer. I quit my full-time job more than a year ago to go freelance precisely to be able to free up time for both personal software projects and for artistic endeavours aka hobbies (guitar and comics).

I organise my working week days roughly as 3 days of "client billable projects" (paid work), one day personal software development and one day "hobbies", which this last year has mostly been drawing.

One thing that has helped me now with drawing (and in the past with guitar) is to aim at allocating a little time every day, never letting slip more than one day in a row. For that I use a calendar, I cross out the days where I've done some drawing. The key to being regular is to allow yourself to occasionally miss one mark (this will invariably happen), but not to allow yourself to miss two consecutive days.

Typically I draw in the evenings after dinner - when my wife and son of 10 are either reading or already in bed. Between 30m and 1h at most. On Thursdays, my special "art day", I take lessons and maybe spend about 4-5h drawing at most.

@Kim-Hunter that is an interesting point. The picture shows the aftermath of a nightly battle between this one dragon and dragonfly. The dragon, tired from the fruitless chase and the lack of sleep, has given up. The dragonfly has escaped and takes a final look from outside the window before leaving - you are totally right, it might help if the dragonfly's posture or look was victorious/defiant/... or something like that... I never thought about that - also TBH I find it really hard to draw .

@Tiffany-Thomas that is a great suggestion, thanks!

@Tiffany-Thomas "it seems like the shape of the window would produce less light (hope that makes sense)" yes it does make a lot of sense.

@Tiffany-Thomas thanks a lot for these!

I did some initial studies with Copic markers... however I decided that for the purpose of learning I wanted to see what I could do purely in black and white. I never considered using diluted ink, which you made me realise is an interesting option to explore.

I can see how the image is much improved with the extra shading. I believe that for the type of illustration/comic I want to work on, digital shading and coloring on top of the B/W ink may end up being my go-to approach.

I will experiment and see.