Just a doodle of wolverine… I’d really like to make a good drawing of this character someday. Keep practicing, and maybe I’ll get there.

Following up on my post from several months ago on Fun with a Pencil, I’d like to present the quintessential Andrew Loomis book, Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth. It’s hard to describe how good this book really is. I went to art school, and studied design drawing, fashion drawing, and fine art figure drawing, and I don’t think any instructor taught me as much as I learned from this book. (True, I still have a lot of room for improvement, but that’s another post someday.)

It’s a near-perfect explanation of all the key concepts you need to master to illustrate the human form. He starts with the basics of proportion, then he provides a great explanation of anatomy as it relates to art. Later in the book, he shows you how to light the figure, how to construct poses, and how to deal with balance and movement.

He also provides a great selection of samples of finished drawings, many in the pinup style.

If you only read one figure drawing book, this is the one to read.

• Download Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth

I first created these brushes around January 2008. I scoured the web looking for decent and simple photoshop brushes to create that natural media look that you can get so easily in Painter.

The brushes that I found on other sites fell into two categories–rubber stamp brushes (ok for design, but not for painting), and low-res brushes (also useless for painting). So I rolled up my sleeves and created my own.

The brushes in this pack were created from vector drawings, and they were designed to create a rough-edged stroke like you would get when using a real brush. These are super-high res (2500px), but I’ve also included pre-scaled versions of each brush. You can make them larger or smaller without loss of quality. As shown in the preview image, if you play with the scattering settings, you can get some other effects than just a rough-edged stroke. They should be compatible with Photoshop CS2 and above.

These have served me surprisingly well, and I hope they are useful for you too! If you find them useful, please comment, with a link to your work.

Download the zip here

PS These brushes are free for use in any commercial or personal work. You may redistribute, as long as a link back to this site is maintained. You may not sell these brushes.

Here’s a little test movie showing a screen cap of some vector drawing. The demo mostly shows me tweaking a rought layout drawing and detailing some hair. It might be useful for somebody trying to learn to use the pen tool in AI… but mostly it’s just me trying out Adobe Captivate. I’ll try to come up with some topics for more little demos. Any ideas, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Hi there, peeps! Long time no see. Holy crap, I’m drawing a man! But like Rob Liefeld before me, I’m cleverly avoiding drawing his feet… maybe next time. Baby steps.

What’s up, peeps? So I finally finished a drawing… sort of. I still feel like I’m losing ground due to not being able to draw enough, due to working my butt off, due to trying to maintain my lavish lifestyle

But this one has some good qualities. Hopefully more will follow soon. And if anybody’s interested in the brushes, I used my markers (available here) and also some custom-made bristle brushes. I can upload the bristles if anybody wants them.

Whether you’re drawing with a pencil or with vectors, some of the same ideas apply. In my vector drawings, I used to try to be very precise, drawing the finished lines and shapes exactly. Then, after I started learning to use brushes, I saw that I could make much more fluid and interesting shapes by following a larger and looser process. Here are a couple images to show the technique.

• First, I draw with big loose lines, defining the lines of motion, and worrying about intersection points, but not too much about end points of lines.
• I try to create relationships between different lines so that they complement each other.
• Then I add some detail to pull it together. Even with the detail, I don’t worry about defining endpoints very much. This is how a good artist would draw with a pencil, so it makes sense to do the same in Illustrator.
• Once the rough drawing is done, I copy it and start cutting, masking, and applying brushes to bring it closer and closer to a finished drawing.

That’s a big part of my drawing strategy right now. Sometimes it’s hard to sort out all those loose and crazy lines, but I think the result is worth it–a little bit of unique style and a lot of cool in-progress images!

Yes, I said it!

I finally saw the Dark Knight. Don’t get me wrong–it was awesome! But after reading so many rave reviews, I really thought it was going to de-throne Burton’s Batman, and it didn’t do that for me.

First, though, let’s start off with some things the movie does well. Christian Bale makes a good Bruce Wayne, and Alfred and Lucius Fox were great additions to the cast. Gary Oldman made a perfect young Jim Gordon was awesome, and I loved the scenes where Batman disappeared in the middle of a conversation, true to the comics. The story was good for a comic book movie, and I do like the different treatment they gave the joker. He is way better than Caesar Romero, and also better than the bizarre Matsuda version from the newer “The Batman” cartoons.

I guess I’ll always be a product of the 80’s and 90’s though. I’m reminded of this every time I turn on the radio and have to switch it back off immediately. I’m also reminded of it when I watch The Dark Knight. It’s just not the definitive Batman movie for me. Burton’s Batman is still that movie. Here are some reasons why:

• In TDK, Gotham is too real. One of the distinctions of DC Comics is that they don’t try to be too real. I prefer the stylized and anarchronistic Gotham that Burton imagined to the streets of Chicago.
• The new Bat-vehicles are too over-the-top and futuristic. Burton’s batmobile is a classic. I even prefer the vehicles from the Adam West show. And what a shame that the motorcycle made it onto the DVD cover!
• Somebody should have let Lando Calrissian become Two-Face. He and I are both still pissed about that one.
• And finally, the main subject of this post–the Joker! Everybody’s raving about how Ledger’s version of the joker is the perfect crazy homicidal maniac. They’re probably right, but he’s too much “homicidal” and not enough “crazy.” Nicholson understood this. The TDK crew was too busy trying to be dark and missed the boat on the humor and unpredictability of the character.

I know I’m in the minority here, but it had to be said. Recognize!

I have this strong desire to draw some male characters this year. But considering that I’m out of practice, I figured I’d better draw a few pinups before I try something crazy. 3 guesses who this one’s going to be?

First of all, here’s a character I drew for a certain bank headquartered here in the Queen City… They had asked for a genie like “I dream of Genie.” They decided my genie was a little bit too hot for their conservative banking audience, and decided just to use a smoking lamp instead. Oh well.

And this one is a character for a telecom client. I was hesitant to turn him in, because he came out looking more ghetto fabulous than I meant, but the client loved him.