Lil' dude...

So I found this great book about sketching and how to get characters to look realistic (within manga style, that is) and proportioned. It's very very useful to learn how to draw the human figure in general then stylize it to look like a cool manga character. I'm becoming a huge fan of some of these How To Draw Manga kind of books, I wish I'd had them available a few years ago, they would've helped me a lot. Many of them are just a collection of artwork and they are not very helpful because they don't explain much about how the artist gets there but some of them (mostly written by japenese artist) takes drawing manga very seriously and give great advice.


Anyway, I looked at this book and started a new character from scratch using some of the techniques taught in there and came up with some cool stuff. Here's probably the best one I did today....

Big dude, inked

Here's the big dude I uploaded as a sketch last night only now it's inked. There are a few lines I don't like at all and I don't know what I'm doing with my tones but overall it's probably the best attempt I've done inking a sketch so far. Fooling with the settings in Masnga Studio, I think I'm very close to figure out what works best for my style of drawing and to achieve the style I'm going after.... like I said on a previous post, it's all about practice practice and practice.

More sketching....

It looks like I'm finally getting the habit of sitting down and sketch and practice a little bit everyday, which it's helping a lot when it comes to getting used to drawing with the Wacom tablet.

I also wrote the first chapter of this story I've been thinking about to submit to Tokyopop which helped me picture the characters I need for the story a little bit better. I sketched for a little bit and worked on two of the characters for the story. She's looking like she could be the main character while he's a secondary character that I'm not sure will have a big role after the first chapter... we'll see. Well, here they are...

Tokyopop

True to my own record of not keeping up with my blogs, here I am again not posting anything for a while. Truth is this time, I do have a good excuse as some relatives visited me from Spain for a couple of weeks in early February and I just didn’t have time to do much of anything.

I’m back now though. I’m back at drawing and learning about Manga Studio, my Wacom tablet, etc…. it’s all taking some time to get used to but I’m actually doing better then I thought. I have also decided I will try to draw a short story to submit to Tokyopop’s pilot program, which pretty much allows amateur manga artists to send them ideas and art for a manga series for their consideration. The cool part is there have been a few pilots picked up by TP and you can actually find manga drawn in the US in bookstores. How cool is that? I never though such an opportunity would ever be available but hey, there it is, so I’m gonna try to take advantage of it.

I guess I will be posting sketches and characters for this short story soon so stay tuned!

TRYING THE GRAPHIC TABLET

Well, here it is! My first attempts at drawing and inking with my Wacom Intuos3 and Manga Studio. I'm still trying to get used to the tablet but I feel more and more comfortable with it with every new line I do. I'm also trying to set up the tools so I can get results I'm happy with... I think I'm getting there. Anyway, I'm sure I'll be posting more soon, this is just too much fun!

WACOM INTUOS3

Finally! After a few days battling with the eBay seller that was supposed to send me the Wacom Intous3 graphic tablet I'd bought from him, I finally got it yesterday. I installed it and quickly started to draw inside Manga Studio.... it was a bit weird at first, I need to get used to drawing on the tablet while looking at the screen, but pretty quickly I started to get it.... I'm still not 100% comfortable with it but I only used it for about an hour last night so I guess it takes a little longer than that.
It was awesome to be able to use layers to sketch then ink with the pen tool, add tones.... it's such a fantastic set up! I can't wait to get comfortable with it and start drawing a story or two.

I should be posting more art soon!

PRACTICING.....

During the last few days, I've realized that drawing is much like playing guitar: you have to practice a lot and practice smart to get better. I always thought that it didn't really matter what I practiced when I grabbed a guitar to improve my chops but over time, with the help of a few teachers, I've realized that you have to be smart about what you practice and how, otherwise you'll always be stuck playing the same stuff over and over again.

Drawing is just like that, all my life I've done nothing but faces, mostly in front or profile poses and obviously, when I try something different, well, it doesn't work very well.... Same goes for action poses, it's always been so hard to get them right that I almost never practice them, it was no fun... of course, since I didn't practice that, I never got better at them so now I'm in the same place I was a few years ago, being fairly good at drawing certain things and awful at drawing some others. I need to try different things and do it almost daily, to get good at it before I can even attempt to do a complete story. Yesterday I tried a few expression and angles that I usually don't do and it was hard but a couple of them turned out ok. Check them out: