Learning how to draw comics

Within a few days of each other, two of the comic book artists I follow mentioned people asking for advice about breaking in, but balking at doing sequential pages.

It was interesting to me that it was coming up. I can see that doing splashy covers would be fun but, if you love comics, it seems like storytelling is the big point here, and also that the need to be able to do that part would be obvious. The other thing that interested me though, is that I realized I have resources as I start the next part of working on the comic book.

Mainly I have been worried about color. When I used to draw more frequently, I tended to do it in pen or pencil. Sometimes I would use these waxy crayon type things for color, but I normally didn’t do it at all. As I started doing some rough sketches of the characters, two things became apparent.

One was that I have totally lost ground. I was not as good then as I want to be, but I was better than I am now. That was discouraging, but not completely unexpected. The other was that the colored pencils that I bought were going to be completely unsatisfactory. Okay, maybe it would be a while before anyone’s face or body looked right, but I at least wanted to see how Wren’s hair would come out, and it was awful.

I have a while before I absolutely need to make color work, and I could possibly even do the whole thing in black and white – a lot of comics do. However, it was a concern, and I was thinking, well, I can ask someone when I get there. There are things coming up where I should be able to learn more.

Right now I am taking a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Gender through Comics, I am going to be able to attend the International Comic Arts Forum conference, and I have filled out volunteer applications for both Rose City Comic Con and Stumptown Comics Fest. On a side-note, I know that the big Comic Con is in San Diego, but it’s hard to imagine it being as good year-round for comics as Portland is.

Admittedly, none of those things listed would immediately show me how to color, but I thought I would meet people and maybe find book recommendations, and I would just be learning a lot. Seeing those tweets made me realize I could ask right now. And I did, and I got two book recommendations. Special thanks to David Hahn, plus Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett on that.

It will be a while before I am ready for the books, which is fine. My plan now is to just practice drawing from the comics I have. I will be trying to duplicate characters from Becky Cloonan (Wolves and The Mire, and maybe some Swamp Thing), Amy Reeder (Halloween Eve), Tom Derenick (Justice League), Ethan Van Sciver (Batman), Julian Lopez (Wonder Woman), Rich Ellis (Memorial), Bob Burden (Flaming Carrot), Gabriel Ba (Umbrella Academy), and probably some Van Von Hunter, though it’s a bit harder to tell who the artist is on that (their process may be more computer driven).

I know from the Comic Con movie that I need to be drawing out of my head, but I’m just not at that point yet. I need to try how some of these other styles feel while I’m finding my own. Honestly, I am not above tracing if that’s what it takes to get the process of forming these lines correctly, though I am not planning on that happening. I used to be pretty good at reproducing pictures out of coloring books and things, and drawing people from photos. It helped if it was already in two dimensions.

One thing I that I think will be good is that I have Black Canary and Donna Troy in both the Justice League and Wonder Woman comics. They don’t appear a lot, but they are both there and by two different artists. That should be helpful, and I can find some other character who has been portrayed by many different artists, and get a feel for different styles for the same character. And I own digital comics now! That’s what I’m doing for the MOOC. (I still prefer physical copies, but it’s a practical matter in this case.)

My thought is that I will be sketching other characters, and probably throwing in practice attempts at my characters, through November, and then I will probably redo The Bear in the Net, with full illustrations, before Christmas. Then I anticipate starting to draw actual panels in 2014.

It will be a long haul. At first I thought I could imagine doing eight chapters, and then going back to redo the first two, because I would improve enough to have hated the early work. Now that sounds like a bad idea, like if I need to wait a while to start, that’s okay. It can even be 2015. I mean, all of my plans are for getting good at drawing people. What about vehicles and guns? It’s a desert wasteland, so there aren’t a lot of plants and animals, but there is at least one each of a rat, pigeon, tree, and a young strawberry plant. There’s just a lot to do.

I expect to suck for a while, but I can live with that, because I also expect to improve. I don’t expect to ever work in comics. Yes, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but I still think I will be doing this for the film making. I will understand so much more about setting up shots and visual priorities after working through this.

You can’t generally draw every single gesture and emotion, so how do you convey the movement? Which this is most important to show? When Jane is rescued, we cut straight from the van to her getting into bed, because a scene with dialogue with Mitch and Jacob finding out she was alive would have dragged it out too much. That doesn’t mean a few panels showing their shocked faces wouldn’t be right.

So this is exciting for me. I still want to be writing new things, but now I’m adding drawing back to my life, beyond the bored doodles of fruits and geometric shapes that I do in meetings. I’m learning a lot, and I have people I can ask when I hit a wall.

And if at some point, continuing to be wrong about everything, I need to demonstrate that I can pull off sequential storytelling, well, I should have some pretty convincing proof.