Learn to Draw Comics for Beginners: A Comprehensive Guide

Comic art is a captivating blend of storytelling, illustration, design, pacing, and acting. Mastering this art form requires a deep dive into each component, followed by a synthesis of these elements. This article provides a structured approach for beginners eager to embark on their comic creation journey.

Understanding the Fundamentals of Comic Creation

The Collaborative Nature of Comics

Comics are often a collaborative medium, involving writers, artists, colorists, and letterers. A common approach is to specialize in one area and build a portfolio to secure work on existing comic books. However, an alternative path involves creating your own comic, which offers greater creative control and a deeper understanding of the entire process.

Why Create Your Own Comic?

Creating your own comic allows you to be a "comic generalist," involved in every stage from conception to completion. This holistic understanding enhances your decision-making at each step, fostering confidence in your creative choices.

Writing: The Foundation of Visual Storytelling

Writing is an integral part of comic creation. Conceptualizing ideas, outlining the plot, and crafting a script are essential before any drawing begins. The art of writing an engaging story is arguably more challenging than drawing it, making it crucial to develop your writing skills early on.

Investment in Your Art

Creating your own comic fosters a deeper investment in your art. Developing a story you genuinely care about over months of planning and writing will amplify your dedication to the final artwork. You'll develop a sharper eye for design and consistency, striving to bring your characters and environments to life as vividly as they appear in your imagination.

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Where to Begin: The Writing Process

Drawing a comic without a clear plot outline is not recommended. The initial step should always be writing.

Inspiration: The Spark of Creativity

To write a compelling story, you must first find inspiration. If your goal is to create a comic that you and others will enjoy, then everything you create must stem from a place you feel deeply connected to. This is the only way you will continue to care about making the comic, especially when motivation wanes.

Identifying Your Creative Heroes

Delve into your comic book collection and identify the stories that resonated with you most. Also, consider classic movies that hold a special place in your heart. Compile a list of inspirational stories and creators to study. For each entry, list the specific elements that drew you to their work.

Creating a List of Inspirational Stories

This list, which can be called the Legends of Comic Storytelling, should be based on your authentic connections and taste, not industry consensus. The subjects and artists you admire are a part of you, waiting to be discovered.

Connecting Personal Experiences to Your Inspirations

Prioritize your list of inspirations and consider personal experiences you'd like to share. For example, if you recovered from a car accident through physical therapy, you could tie the message "Everything heals in time" to a concept from your list. Combining that inspiration with the conspiratorial nature of V for Vendetta could spark story ideas about secrets causing harm but also healing over time.

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Brainstorming and Idea Development

From your past experiences and influential inspirations, you can unearth small nuggets of a greater story. A spark will ignite within you, driving you to write more about the idea.

Example: Star Circuit

Star Circuit is a comic book that was inspired by a number of influences, including:

Inspirations:
- Akira
- Bladerunner
- Green Lantern
- Moto GP Racing
- Tron
Personal Experiences:
- Family Rivalries
- Artistic Journey
- Internal Conflicts
- Sacrifices

These influences led to the development of a cyberpunk story centered around racing.

Working Within a Theme

Once your connections take shape and characters with different motives emerge, identify the underlying theme. Choose a theme whose message you genuinely want to spread.

Crafting a Logline

Create a logline that encapsulates your story in as few words as possible. Loglines are usually one or two sentences with an ironic emphasis based on the great change that needs to take place within the story.

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Plot Development

With a logline in place, you can begin branching out and forming a plot. Work on the scenes you can most easily visualize, using them as pillars to build the rest of the story. Write these scenes on index cards or use programs like Scrivener to organize your ideas, allowing you to visually see the plot being formed.

Research: Filling the Gaps

Research is essential when writing about topics you don't have personal experience with. For example, if your story involves motorcycle racing, immerse yourself in the mechanics of motorcycle design and the operations of real Moto GP races.

Essential Resources for Comic Artists

Books on Sequential Art

These books delve into the art of storytelling through panels, guiding the reader's eye, and blending words and pictures.

Mastering Comics by Jessica Abel & Matt Madden: This book offers a college-level comics course in book form, packed with exercises that prompt intentional thinking about story structure, pacing, and panel choices. It is ideal for beginners seeking a structured learning experience with course-like exercises.
Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner: This book breaks down the principles behind sequential art and visual storytelling. It is a must-read for understanding anatomy, framing, timing, imagery, and writing.
Making Comics by Scott McCloud: This book uses the comic format to teach the fundamentals of comic creation, making it both entertaining and educational. It explains the psychology behind comic drawing conventions.

Books on Figure Drawing

Solid anatomy is crucial for creating believable characters, even stylized ones.

Drawing the Head & Hands by Andrew Loomis: This vintage book breaks down the Loomis Method, a technique for drawing heads and faces. This method demystified drawing faces.
Figure Drawing For All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis: This vintage book covers proportions, poses, and how to give figures weight and balance.
Cartooning the Head & Figure by Jack Hamm: This book simplifies anatomy for a more cartoony style without sacrificing expression or believability.
Freehand Figure Drawing for Illustrators by David H. Ross: This book explains the building blocks of structuring the figure and drawing freehand from imagination. The exercises help build muscle memory.

Books on Character Design

Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft: This book communicates the basics of character design and how to visually communicate personality.
Character Mentor by Tom Bancroft: This book focuses on acting, posing, and subtle details in dynamic character design.

Books on Perspective

Good perspective adds immersion to even simple scenes.

Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea: This book breaks down perspective in a thorough way, with examples tailored for comics.
Perspective Drawing by Ernest Norling: This vintage book explains the principles of perspective in a simple, visual way.

Drawing Comic Characters: A Step-by-Step Guide

Character Design: The Foundation

Before drawing your character, it’s important to nail down their look so you can be consistent. You should work out the character’s overall shape, costume and before starting Page 01 is worth the effort.

Head and Face: The Most Important Features

The shape of the head can suggest a personality-triangular, round, square. Even the shape of the head can suggest a personality. Adding differently shaped hair or other features that can create a unique, recognizable shape can help tremendously as well.

Drawing Heads from Any Angle

In order to draw characters’ heads from any angle, use two basic head shapes as a starting point and then squash and stretch them into the approximate shape. You can borrow from techniques used in animation to construct a character from more basic shapes underlying the head. Start with a circle (or spherical ball, as you imagine it in your mind) and then hanging a pointed jawline off that circle a various angles. Then by drawing a “cross” dividing the center of the face and where the eyes will be, you can use this seed shape to draw that head from any angle.

Proportions of the Face

Take note of how the proportions of the face translate across between the differing angles. The line that runs through the eyes is roughly halfway between the top of the head and the chin. The tip of the nose sits about halfway between the eye line and the chin. The mouth sits about halfway between the nose and the chin. From the side, if you draw a line from the tip of the nose to the chin, the lips will roughly fall in line within there. The ears sit on a line that is halfway between the front of the head and the back and their curve starts in line with eyes.

Egg Shape

Start the head with more of an egg shape. Then, determine which direction the head is facing by drawing a “cross”. The jaw line changes more radically between a straight on view and the profile. It’s more a wedge shape and will take more practice to draw from every angle. You can imagine it being a bit like a cube, only tapering downward to create the chin. Also the cranium isn’t completely round like a sphere or egg, but rather is flattened somewhat on the sides.

Drawing from Life

To work on details like hair and drawing heads from many different angles I recommend practicing drawing from life, copying photos and doing the occasional master study of an artist who you greatly admire. The more you practice, the more you will expand your visual vocabulary as an artist and you can combine, mix and match and create brand new features that are purely your own.

Full-Body Proportions

The first step in drawing full-body human characters is to nail down basic proportions. Often in figure drawing, proportions are measured in “heads” because it is an easy way to check if the features are in the right place in a drawing, especially if the figure is drawn relatively straight on.

Male Proportions

Classic western “heroic” proportions, measuring 8 heads. Also note the proportions of the arm. The elbows are just above waist height and sit roughly in line with the bottom of the rib cage. The wrist fall approximately in line with bottom of the hips.

Female Proportions

Shorter at 7 1/2 heads, which is closer to “realistic” human proportions. The half head is lost around the hips, making her torso slightly shorter than Mike’s, while her legs are about the same length as his.

Underlying Shapes

If we strip away the details and look at the underlying shapes, we can see how each figure is constructed more easily. I use circles (which I think of as “balls”) in place of the joints and draw the forms of the limbs between those. I use an egg shape for the ribcage and sort of a flattened “bowl” shape for the pelvis. I have developed simplified forms for each of the major body shapes: upper arms, lower arms, thighs, calves & shins, hand and feet. I also imagine the shoulder being attached to the collarbone (which it is in reality, as well at the scapula on the back) so it is free to slide around up and down, back and forth on the ribcage when I am posing the figure.

Hip Shapes

The male’s pelvis is taller while the female’s is shorter and a little wider.

Muscular Anatomy

While I won’t go into detail on muscular anatomy (there are entire books on that topic), here is a quick cheat sheet on the basic shapes I’m thinking of when I’m drawing the figure. These shapes are informed by countless hours of drawing characters and human forms from observation and copying drawings out of anatomy books.

Putting Characters into Motion

We need to put them into motion so they take on some life. To do that, we need to start with a fluid set of lines, or “gestures”.

Gesture Lines

These are the “gesture” lines-named after 30-second “gestural drawings” which are often done at the beginning of a figure drawing class. These curves help tie the the forms of the figure together. Use lines like this to build up a pose so it has some underlying life.

Drawing Hands and Feet

The way to tackle these complex forms is the same as above: break them down into simpler shapes.

Hands

Start with sort of a “shovel” shape for the palm, then draw a circle to one side or the other on the wrist end to denote the ball of the thumb. Then draw a smaller rounded shape on the other side to create the heel of the hand. Each of the four knuckles I draw as circles across the top of the shovel shape, and then a fifth at the end of the ball of the thumb. From there, I draw the fingers an thumb as either a mass (if they are clumped together) or as curved lines roughly indicating each finger. Drawing great hands takes a lot of practice, and the best way to get good at them is observation. Just like the rest of the figure, practice drawing from life and good reference photos to not only practice the forms of the hand, but also to see how elegant hand poses come together. You will start to see patterns in how the fingers move together as a loose group, not separately (which is why magicians are illustrated using weird hand poses-they don’t look natural).

Feet

It’s helpful to think of a footprint as a starting point-the heel is separated from the ball of the foot and toes by the arch of the foot. We can flesh out those shapes by using balls once again: one larger one for the heel, and two smaller ones for the ball of foot, leaving room for the arch on the inside curve of the foot. Above the heel is the ankle, which has two small bones on each side that connect down to the top of the ball of the foot to create the main wedge of the foot. For the toes, I think of the classic “ninja sock” with the big toe acting independently of the rest of the toes, which generally clump together as a group. When the character is wearing shoes, then all the toes working together as a group.

Sketchbook Practice

Drawing in a sketchbook can be to help you refine your character drawing.

Comic Book Genres

Comedy: Humor is a characteristic that features in all kinds of comic book art, regardless of its subject.
Superhero: Superheroes remain a defining feature of many best-selling comics.
Manga: Manga has many genres, but one of its most recognizable elements is cartoon-style characters with expressive features. Traditionally, manga is designed to be read from right to left.

Domestika Courses for Comic Book Creation

Comic Book Cover Design: Learn how to design a comic book cover.
Female Comic Character Design: Learn how to draw powerful protagonists from scratch.
Superhero Character Design: Learn how to draw superheroes.
Character Expression: Learn how to create expressive characters.
Manga Illustration with Markers: Learn how to create colorful manga with marker pens.
Visual Narrative for Comic Books: Learn how to build a visual narrative for comic books.
Inking for Comic Books: Learn how to ink your comic books using a combination of analog and digital techniques.
Manga Creation: Explore the entire manga writing process and create your own page.
Comic Book Cover Design: Learn how to create compelling comic book covers.
Graphic Novel Creation: Discover how to create your own graphic novel from the initial idea to the finished publication.
Digital Comic Creation: Explore the world of digital design.
Humorous Comic Strips: Learn how to draw humorous comic strips.

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