THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY - LESSON FIVE: SIX TIPS ABOUT ANATOMY

Last month we talked about how you could imbue your art with structure, proportion, and perspective. So this month let's delve deeper into the subject and start talking about the actual process of figure drawing. After all, now that you have your master proportion grid, you can get to use it in order to create characters and faces in the right proportion, beginning with the following six elements I’ll be sharing with you today. Here, check this out...





1) Skeleton and Muscular System: Always remember to structure your drawings with the right anatomy, proportion, and perspective. If you don't do this your final piece will look rather disjointed, to say the least.

2) Faces: Again, try to learn to draw a face with the aforementioned set of criteria, otherwise what you might end up with won't be to your liking. 

3) Facial Expressions: On average there are six main facial expressions that all others are created from, ranging from happy, sad, stoic, fear, neutral, contempt, and anger. 

4) Hands: Hands are used all the time to convey emotions and feelings in comics. So do your best to learn its form and shape so you can represent it the right way and convey the right emotional reactions.

5) Feet: Editors love feet, and constantly make sure they're drawn properly because artists don’t often know how to draw them. So much so, in fact, that certain creators try to hide them off panel, which is like writing a balloon on the page that states: I don’t know how to draw feet!

6) Body Expressions: This is a very important aspect when it comes down to telling a story with a selection of characters. Every character should have a different body posture and expression and be able to convey some aspect of their personality. So, when drawing a character, think about his / her personal traits and how to translate those into a body's expression.

(Here is a nice example of Joe Kubert drawing a character at New York Comic Con a few years ago)

One of the biggest challenges every artist has to face is how to create a character that looks real and alive!! These are living, breathing, people, and we rarely see an image of a character that really looks like he or she is alive! So it’s vital to master the art of figure drawing and be able to create a credible comic book page while serving the actual story you want to tell.

Being consistent is also vital when you want to keep the reader 'in the story' and is another great challenge an artist has to deal with. Drawing the same character in different angles and poses can be hard and frustrating if you don’t have the necessary experience to fall back on. So what’s needed in this case is practice, practice, and some more practice.

NEXT: The Best #1 Tool to create Perspectives Faster.

This article was brought to you by Brazilian born, Rod Rodollfo from Alpha Brain Art Studio. Please feel free to download the Master Page Template used by Rod on many Published Comic Books by clicking here! And while you're at it, don't forget to follow him on his website, twitter, and facebook pages.