drawing

Looking for inspiration for illustrating a short story

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First things first... I can’t attempt to make a graphic novel, no matter how short, without understanding what great looks like. Enrolled in the city library to explore its graphic novel selection.

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Some ideas I captured from Hilda...

 

Use of colours to convey level on intensity/anger

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

Conveying vastness

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

Action sequences from multiple perspectives

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

Credit: Luke Pearson, Flying Eye Books

DC Comics are very advanced. The drawings are absolutely gorgeous!!

Credit: DC COMICS, Earth One by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank

Credit: DC COMICS, Earth One by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank

What attracted me most was the storytelling techniques by Scott Snyder. Sometimes, the narrative is driving a tangential point the drawings, while matching the sequence perfectly. These tangential sequences are used to add depth to the story; to reveal something about the world without taking you away from the immediate action. It is very clever!

Volume 1 of Batman: The Court of Owls featured a script, a format I can use for my own story!

Credit: DC COMICS, Batman: Volume 1, The Cour of Owls by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo Jonathan Glapion

Credit: DC COMICS, Batman: Volume 1, The Cour of Owls by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo Jonathan Glapion

Lastly, I bought a fiction writing course on Audible. I’ll share some insights from it in a future post. 

Learning to draw through rapid visualisation

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​I’ve started to do some research on techniques to do sketches and drawings on my iPad. Running through lots of YouTubes like this one:

One of the interesting things about Procreate is its ability to draw in layers. All artists use techniques like this whether through tracing or letting oil paint dry layer at a time. In mediums like comic books, this is especially true where the storywriting, sketching, inking, colouring and lettering are done by different artists. Sketching is done by the Penciller, who would go through multiple layers of drawings that eventually get traced on with an inking phase to give the final refined, consistent look.

With “rapid visualisation”, ideas start off as basic shapes. Through multiple iterations, we can start to increase detail and fidelity. Over many layers, we can drive the character or object towards the feel we want.

Let’s try to draw an elephant as an example...

Colouring would work in a similar way...

I’m having a lot of fun learning and improving my drawing skills. I obviously have a long way to go... ;)