ART – The Power of Creating Model Sheet Turn Arounds

This week I’m sharing the model sheet turn around I just finished.  It took time so I didn’t get to work on a silly comic or anything fun like that.

The turn around is of my character Ariana who is an antagonist in the Draw Fu comic I’m working on.  Not having finished this one turn around has been the biggest reason why I haven’t gotten more work done on that project.

Now that it’s done, that project should really start moving forward.

Take a look at the drawings below and then I’ll go into why I think model sheet turn arounds like theses are very important if you’re making a personal project.

Why Model Sheet Turn Arounds are Important

Over the years I’ve come to rely more and more on model sheets and turn arounds.  The reason why is because they take the guess work out of drawing the characters in your project.

If you don’t have one, you’re inventing the characters over and over as you go.  Sometimes that’s good but most times, not so much.

You end up using your previous drawings as model sheets anyway just to see what you did with your character in previous panels.  If you have a model sheet with a turn around to begin with, your character will also be much more consistent through out the process.

For me, the greatest benefit of having a good Model Sheet turn around, is being able to literally place the model sheet under my roughs of the character so I can quickly and easily get all the proportions down as fast as possible.

So if I have the character running, walking, jumping talking, etc, I rough out the pose I want them to be in, then I enlarge or reduce my model sheet to fit the size of my rough. I then put the model sheet under the rough drawing and start drawing the character “on model,” by comparing the model underneath to my rough and I make adjustments based on the pose.  I don’t copy the model sheet pose since it’s stiff and boring, but I get all the proportions where they should be.

And sometimes, depending on the pose and view point, I just straight up trace the body part straight off the model sheet.

I do this at work all the time with the Simpsons Characters.  It saves me a lot of measuring time so that I know I’ve drawn the character proportions right from the start so I can worry only about the composition and the acting.

Model sheet turn arounds speed up the process immensely.

They are the answer to the question, “How do I get my character to look consistent through out my project?” The answer is, create a Model sheet turn around, then reduce and enlarge it as needed to put under your drawings to make the most accurate version of your characters.

If you want to see a video version of this in action, become one of my patrons on Patreon. I’m going to be making a video for my patrons that explains the process of making your characters look consistent very soon.

ART – Want Me to Draw Your Portrait?

The portrait above is of one of my Silver Level Patrons over on Patreon.

Among other rewards, the patrons on Silver level get this:

Once a Month one Silver Patron or higher will be chosen and I will draw their portrait in black and white from shoulders on up, anyway they want: caricature, chibi style, anime, realistic portrait, Simpsonized. Pick a style and I’ll give it a shot. I will send you a high resolution print ready jpeg of the drawing and the PSD file as well.

Patrons are randomly chosen for this and I remove their name from the “hat” when I draw them.

As of the time of this writing I have 4 Silver Patrons and 1 Gold Patron.  If you become a Silver Patron now, you’re chances of getting your portrait drawn are REALLY good. There’s even one less person worry about.

Not only that, but once I’ve gone through all the Patrons, I’ll put everyone’s names back in the “hat” and draw them again.  I may end up drawing you multiple times in multiple styles.

Don’t miss out.  Act now:

https://www.patreon.com/LuisEscobar

Art – Draw Over Videos

I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately. None of which I simply post here.

Not because it’s work related but because I’ve making artwork for my next Draw Fu post. I can’t show that art until I’m done with the post.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of “draw over” videos.  These videos were done for the winners of my Patreon giveaway last Month.

The winners could send me up to 3 drawings, and I would draw over their work, giving them tips and advice to improve them.

This took a lot of my drawing time away, so I wasn’t able to post any new drawings this week.

HOWEVER,  web cartoonist George Ward graciously allowed me to post them online.  They’re all over an hour long.  AND they’re only available to my patrons on Patreon.

Yeah, I know, that totally sucks, BUT they’re available to ALL patrons, at ANY level. Which means, if you pledge a buck, you can see the videos.

You’d also be supporting me and my work, which means more fun stuff for you.  So if you want access to these cool videos it’s as easy as becoming my patron.

Thank you so much for your support.

https://www.patreon.com/LuisEscobar

George Ward’s Draw Over Part 1 from Luis Escobar on Vimeo.

George Ward’s Draw Over Part 2 from Luis Escobar on Vimeo.

George Ward’s Draw Over Part 3 from Luis Escobar on Vimeo.

George Ward’s Draw Over Part 4 from Luis Escobar on Vimeo.

ART – Color Experimentation – Triad Color Scheme

The last drawing I colored, I used a Tetrad Color Scheme, which is fancy way of saying I limited myself to only using four colors.

This time around I limited myself to three, which is called a Triad Color Scheme.

The colors I used were these:

I got these handy scheme at http://colorschemedesigner.com

My Big Take Away

There was one big thing that I learned this time around. I guess I should have known this but I just hadn’t put two and two together.

What I learned was, you can use more colors than the limited palette you give yourself.

If this is confusing, let me explain.

Yes, your only using a limited palette.  They are your  main colors, BUT when mixing them to create darker versions, or lighter version of the colors, it’s okay to use other colors to lighten and darken them up.

You’re still using the limited palette, but those colors will pop more if you mix them up with complimentary colors, or lighten them up with yellows and such.

You can make these color obvious or not, but it’s okay to use them.  The colors will come out richer that way.

I didn’t learn this until I was very far into the coloring process so I didn’t use it nearly enough.  Still, now I know better. Next time I color a drawing, I’ll make full use of this info.

And now for something completely different….

Patreon!

I forgot to announce this on my blog last week but I’m now officially on Patreon!

What is Patreon? Glad you asked. I think the best way to explain it is via this video. It does a good job giving you the rundown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-IDF809fQ

You can get high resolution, print ready jpegs of my art, full PSD versions of it and much more…go on over to my Patreon campaign and support me.

I’ve got a ton a great rewards and your also helping me produce more of this stuff.

I appreciate your support.  Thanks in advance.

https://www.patreon.com/LuisEscobar

 ART – Black Adam vs Namor the Submariner

In 2009 I drew this picture of Black Adam vs. Namor.  This week I inked it so that I could color it.

Here’s the final inks.  I did some adjusting to the drawing.  They are slight but they’re there.

The biggest adjustment was to the guy on the end.  I changed his face so it looks more like who it’s suppose to be.  Can you guess who it is?

The original was really off.

Here’s what the original pencil drawing looked like in case you’ve never seen it:

Hopefully by next week, I’ll have the whole thing colored.

ART – Two Take Aways From a Coloring Experiment

Above is the final version of my Ironman vs. Batman drawing.

I started it three weeks ago and as I wrote at the time,  I decided to color the characters using a preliminary mid tone base color.

I also used a Tetrad color Scheme.Which is  a fancy way of saying, I limited myself to only using four colors.

Specifically these four colors:

Thoughts On Using a Tetrad Color Scheme

The color limiting was challenging.  I would have definitely made different decisions had I had more colors to work with with.

That said, I’m not certain I colored this “right.”  If you notice how the colors in my final piece are divided compared to the color palette I was working off of. Blue is meant to be THE dominant color and all other color should be secondary.

In my picture though, it almost seems like green and blue are almost divided equally…or that just me being critical?

Thoughts On Using a Preliminary Mid Tone Base Color

I also used a different method to color this drawing.  I started out with mid tone base color or each area and then I darkened and lightened each area as necessary.

It turned out to be an okay way to work.  I also left all the reflective light til last, which made it easier to add odd colors to the shadow areas.

Over all I learned a lot and I’ll probably use this method again just to see what it’s like on another drawing.

What do you think?

ART – Coloring: It Doesn’t Hurt to Use Reference.

Shinny is hard.

As I wrote last time, I’m trying to stick to only four colors.

As of the time of this writing, this is where I left off the coloring for my latest piece.

I didn’t get a lot done, mostly because Ironman is shinny.  This slowed me down a lot.  Coloring him wasn’t at all straight forward.

There’s all that reflection do deal with.  I didn’t really know how to do it so I found some reference on the internet to help me get through it.

Here’s what I used:

The photos helped me visualize what shine on my drawing might look like.  I’m not exactly sure if I succeeded but it was worth trying.

This brings me to a different related topic…

It’s Okay To Use Reference

I teach drawing over that TheDrawingWebsite.com.  I only bring this up because I’ve noticed something.  There are some beginning artists who refuse to use any kind of reference.

I don’t know why this is. It’s as if they somehow think that doing so makes them a lesser artist.

If you’re goal is to get something that looks natural, you ought to look at what it looks like in reality.  There isn’t any shame in it.

They want to draw or paint something only out of their imagination, and make it look naturalistic, but they’ve never bothered to truly study nature.  It makes no sense.

If you’re not sure about what something looks like, don’t make it up.  Look it up.  The more you look up stuff the more you’ll educate yourself.

The more you educate yourself the bigger the library of experience you will have to draw upon when doing art.  This helps you draw more accurate naturalistic stuff from your imagination.

It’s okay to use reference.

ART – Taking Risks and Experimenting With Color

You simply can’t get good at color without experimenting and doing some crazy things you don’t feel comfortable doing.

Case in point…

I still don’t feel comfortable with color.  It seems to me like my last coloring job turned out okay by accident.

It felt as if I was stumbling into all kinds of happy accidents all the way through. That said, I learned a few things I wanted to do different this time.

To this end, in my next coloring job, I’m experimenting.  On of the things I thought wasn’t quite working in the last process was how dark the shadows where. Especially since I wanted the drawing to be lit by daylight.

If you see the final colors, they don’t seem that dark, but as I was coloring them, they were much darker and I had to lighten them up.

The process this time will be different.  I will start with a slighter lighter base than I did previously. That way I can both darken and lighten it where I think it needs it.

Which is the way most artists paint anyway.

Also any ambient light or reflective light will be put in a little later.

And the last thing that I’ll be doing different is the color choices.  I’m doing a Tetrad color Scheme approach.

In order to pick the colors I wanted to use, I went to the website Color Scheme Designer.  I believe it’s a website for web design colors but I think it will work fine for my purposes.

You can see the color scheme it came up with at the top of this post.

So I started using the colors.  This is all I got done this week:

I’ve barely started.  The idea behind coloring every character one color, was just to see what the most dominant colors of each character would look like over all. I also wanted to see what the dominant color (blue) looked like next to the secondary ones.

To be honest, I don’t really think it’s helping. Still, I’ll move forward and hope to get more done (if not all of it done) by next week.

I’m uncomfortable again.  This feels risky to me.  I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I know can’t learn if I don’t risk and experiment.

Hopefully, it will turn out okay.  The one good thing about coloring this drawing is the minimal amount of skin I have to color.

ART – Drawing: Getting Over the Hump

This week I managed to finish coloring my drawing.  I think it turned out okay.

It was a huge struggle and more than once I wanted to quit.

I’ve found that, the creative process often throws curve balls at you.  I’ve found myself struggling with drawings more often than not.

There are times I quit and there are times I don’t.

The times I quit are usually, strategic.  It usually means that I discover I’m truly over my head. My skills are just not ready for the work and I need to practice more before I try again. In cases like those it’s better to count my loses, learn from my mistakes and let the work go.

The times I DON’T quit are different though.  Those are the times that I KNOW I can finish, but the work is frustrating me. It’s tough work and it feels like it might be out of the reach of my skill set, but really, it’s just my frustration telling me that.

How can you tell the difference?

The more work you do. The more you push your skill sets, the easier it will be for you to tell the difference.

Once you get over the hump, you’ll be glad you pushed through to the end.

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Learning Color: Theory vs. Practice

ART – Learning Color: Theory vs. Practice

This is a work in progress coloring job:

Problems

I have no idea what I’m doing.

Well…I kinda do.  But all I know is theory. As this coloring job is showing me, there’s a difference between theory and practice.

Let me quickly explain what I’m talking about.

If you notice, some of the colors in the above drawing look finished while the others are all weird and dark.

This is because those dark areas are meant to be the shadow colors I’m going to be using.  Then I’m going to put in brighter colors on top of them.

Betty and Veronica, for example are mostly done.  But if you notice, some of their shadow sides are a tad odd.  Veronica’s pants are a bit red in the shadow.  Betty’s shadow is purple, her shirt is green, and her pants are yellowish.

The reason for all these odd colors is because I was using the complimentary colors for the shadows.  The opposite of the main color for each thing.

The problem is, I don’t know if I actually go the true complimentary color.  It both looks right and wrong to me.

On the one hand, I don’t want the shadow side to be too dark. And  I think that’s exactly what’s going on with Veronica.  Her shadows are too dark.  I wanted this to be more of a day light scene.

Betty looks better but I’m not sure if the shadow side is working.  I tried darkening the shadows on her but it looked too dark:

I just don’t like it. It’s not what I want.

What I’m Learning

Turns out, that knowing color theory is one thing, but there’s more too it.  Color does stuff…weird stuff.

If you read anything about color theory, you’ll know that colors look different depending on the colors that surround them.

Thing is, you have to actually color and see what happens through trial and error.  Someone could show you what color does in certain circumstances but still, you have to do it yourself for it to sink in.

This means you have to experiment a lot.  You have to color, paint, use colors and mess with them.  You have to study.  Copy master paintings and simply paint.

All these things have to be done before you begin to start figuring some stuff out.  And even then, you will probably be surprised by what color does.

I don’t know any of this stuff at all so, I have no idea what I’m doing and if it’s going to work.

Moving Forward

I’m midway through coloring this drawing.  I have no idea what it’s going to look like once it’s done.  I don’t know if it’s going to look good or not.

Right now the drawing is a mess of colors.  Colors that I’m not even sure are really harmonizing. Perhaps I should have done a quick thumbnail color study to get everything working before I actually started coloring.

Still, it’s a work in progress, and I’m learning new things as I go.

Hopefully, I’ll be done next week and you’ll see how it turned out.

To See The Finished Version See:

Drawing: Getting Over the Hump