Thread: Sketch Practice

I've been fairly quiet lately, as far as maps go, and have been generally burned out. So Friday I figured that I'd practice my basic drawing skills as I haven't actually drawn anything, other than maps, in over twelve years. After a few hours I decided that I could do this up as an evolving tut but I am unsure whether to actually post as a tut since it's not really map related. There's a million tuts for drawing things, some better some worse, but this is how I go about it. I did this completely in Photoshop and so therefore it went a lot slower than what I'm accustomed to. I used a tip called "graphite pencil" for the sketch phase and a 3-pixel soft round brush for the inking.

1. Start with a basic pose. For this I chose something simple because I'm pretty rusty.

2. For this pose I put in 4 lines equally spaced, roughly. Because I want the figure turned toward the viewer his left side will be closer and hence why the lines angle the way the do...basic one-point perspective that trails off to the left side of the screen. These lines are important if you want to make your people look right, too often they get drawn with legs that are too short. If you make feet to knees = 1/3, knees to hips = 1/3, and hips to shoulders = 1/3 then things will look right. Bear in mind that these proportions are for humans and that dwarves and children will have proportions closer to legs = 1/2 and body = 1/2. [fig 1]

3. The top line will get the shoulders, the next line down will get the hips, the next line down will get the knees, the bottom line will get the feet, and the head will be above the top line.

4. Draw in the basic stick-man wire-frame skeleton. Here the arms are important...the elbows are just above the hips and the hands come to the middle of the thighs.

5. Give the head some volume by roughing in some lines that represent how the face is oriented. The eyes are in the middle of the head, too often people draw faces with the eyes too high which produces a long face and a short forehead.

6. With the setup done I rough in some basic oval shapes to rough in where the muscles will be. Starting from the top; I rough in a jaw and chin and place an ear at the end of the jaw line, slope the neck down to the shoulders (big muscley men have triangle-shaped necks while women, children, and less adventurous people have straighter necks), rough in some basic delts (shoulders), rough in the pecs, rough in the ribcage, rough in the abs (there are 8 not 6), give him a package, rough in the thighs (quads and hammies), rough in the calves, next is the ankles (inner ankle bone is a little higher than the outer ankle bone), and put some triangles in for the feet (foot facing viewer is a triangle and foot angled away is more acute). [fig 2]

7. Refine, detail, and basic shading of the musculature. For this step, I suggest looking at either comic books (pretty much unrealistic) or muscle magazines (those guys over-develop every muscle so it's a great resource). I haven't looked at either since 1992 but it's rather ingrained and second-nature to me...I actually wanted to be a professional comic book illustrator 20 years ago so learning anatomy is important. [fig 3]

8. The neck has three parts on muscley dudes - the main tube, the trapezius (the triangular bit), and the adam's apple. The arms have two main muscles to be aware of - the biceps (front of the arm) and the triceps (back of the arm). The forearms have lots of little muscles on the outer part and two big ones on the inner part. Hands are hard because there are a lot of things going on - just likes faces and feet - my guy is going to be holding a sword and shield so I won't mess with them too much, they're not that important for this. My guy is also going to be wearing boots so I won't mess with those either. The abs do not start right under the pecs, they are separated by some space and there is also a little round oval area just under the middle of the ribcage. The side of the ribcage has a bunch of little muscles called obliques - I generally draw these as two sets of little overlapping arcs. The front of the legs have the quads - three big muscles arranged in a triangle plus one that sorta wraps around the inner part of the thigh, and the back part of the leg has the big hamstring that is visible from the side. The knees are drawn sort of like diamonds with flat spots on the side. The calves have one big muscle that wraps around the sides and back and lots of little muscles that aren't really important unless you're drawing a body-builder.

9. On a new layer I refine the face and add some hair.

10. On a new layer I add some rough shapes for the clothes and accessories - shield, sword, scabbard, daggers, sheaths, gloves, boots, mantle, kirtle, belt, and cape. Basic attire for a low level adventurer. Doing folds in cloth may seem hard but that's why I draw all of those muscles - to see where the cloth will get pushed out and deformed. If you need to practice then take a blanket and drape it over a chair and see what the folds look like. [fig 4]

11. On a new layer I start the "inking" process which is basically something with a black line instead of gray pencil-sketch lines. Depending on what your hero is wearing this part can vary widely. Plate armor is fairly easy to draw as it's basically just big shapes...make sure that you leave open areas around the joints to provide some flexibility. Also, don't draw fantastic armor with spikes and things hanging all over it as that would never work in a real fight...you'd poke yourself in the head with shoulder spikes the first time you raised your arm. Chainmail is hard to draw so just make a bunch of tiny tiny squiggles or tiny tiny circles. Scalemail is tedious to draw, sort of like drawing a snake scale by scale by scale. My guy is about level 5 or so so he can't afford fancy armor yet. He has a leather mantle and kirtle over basic clothing and spent his money on a good sword with a weighted tip and a good heater-type shield. [fig 5]