Well, There ye’ bee!!!
I finally made it to this killer post!
Alright everyone, here is the first installment in my quick tutorial series. These are more to show you my methods and processes than to fully explain every way of illustrating the subject matter. I hope that these posts will help you work through your own obstacles and throw more awesome into your art.
I know its early in our journey to have people walking the plank and taking heads but I want to weed out the worthless stowaways like doubt and lack of inspiration. One of the quickest ways of getting into the illustration and drawing mode is with HEAD SKETCHES!!!
This material gets your brain artistically functioning while still working on a stable subject matter (heads don’t change in their basic structure much). This is a great way of getting your brain into the game and functioning and they can be really quick!
Head sketches are also a great way to earn extra money going with quick commissions on your sites and at comic conventions especially!
OK, lets get started!
Below is an image of basic structured head of a man and a woman, common/ heroic figure type. Maybe in another tutorial I will address differing body/ face types but I am also still about these also.
Male:
Brow- Thicker build and muscling, thicker eyebrows
Eyes- Generally smaller and and can be more sunken
Nose- More angular toward crest/bridge of skull, wider at nostrils
Lips- overall thinner and can be less defined on the bottom lip
Chin- Wider and flatter than a woman’s
Neck- Larger muscle groupings and the Traps are anchored higher on the vertebrae
Overall- Representative of strength due to angles
Female:
Brow- less muscling and thinner eyebrows
Eyes- generally larger with longer & thicker eyelashes (great for illustrating!)
Nose- Overall more of a smooth slope than men’s
Lips- Fuller with easily defined edges. Can be very expressive. Their fullness can be expressed with reflections/sheen
Chin- Thinner and tapers more to a point. Jawline also curves out more and that ads to the gently roundness of the structure.
Neck- Less muscling causing it to be thinner overall. Additionally, the Traps are not as thick and give the appearance of anchoring lower to the spine. These features can have the neck “look” longer when it is technically the same length next to a man’s.
Fishyface: The Oyster Eater!
Monsters and Beasts!:
Take the same structure and shift/adjust the placement or emphasis of the features. This works if you want the creature to resemble a more human physiology. This is important if you want the human characters to relate to them on the same level. Adding more animal characteristics take them further away and is a great way of creating a gap of common ground. With more distance between your characters in appearance you can create more tension or opportunities to learn from each other depending on the station/archetype you want them to represent.
Here are two sketches representing more developed features listed above for men and women.
The man is shown with the features of an African American and the female is actually one of my versions of the
Angelus from
Top Cow Procuctions, one of my favorite comic companies. More on them in another post!
I have also attached a sketch of a child’s face. This is a concept piece for one of the children’s stories I am developing, Kodi the Starfish, mentioned in more detail below in my “Current Project List.”
I will make another post in the future detailing their changes in physical structure for children in the future. I would like you to lock in this lesson’s information first.
WHEW!!!!
That was awesome! Thank you for sailing through it with me! Now that we are finished with the lesson I want to let you in on the secrets of my current projects!
Current Project List
I have been pretty busy with new art lately and I want to inform you of the progress.
Comic
First, the biggest project I have in wait is a comic that is being developed for a submission to Image and Dark Horse Comics. I would be the penciler for the project. The writer is still developing the breakdown of the chapters and from the looks of it, it will be about 10 issues. I have finished character concept art, 16 interior pages and 2 covers. I will post a few pieces when I get approval from the writer and this section of the post will be updated.
Children’s Book
The other major project on my table is for an anthology with the awesome community at
Illopond.com! They are an artist project and support community and creating anthologies is one thing they are known for. They have been kind enough to allow me to participate in their latest edition, “
8 in Spaaaaace!” 8 main contributors and multiple others will all participate in creating content and I will notify you as to my progress and art as it happens. I will make a special “Captain’s BLOG” post soon about the art and story of
Kodi the Starfish, my story. Here is a color sample of a concept piece below.
Alllllgrighty ya scurvy bags a’ bones!!!
I think I have tortured ye enough and bid thee fair well!
Please let me know if you have any questions and post a comment if you’d like!
Thank you for dropping by and best wishes to you. I am working on having a regular, bi-weekly schedule for every other Monday. I will also just drop sketches randomly so keep your aye’s peeled!
See you on Monday, November 7th!
Captain Dutz
DutzWorks 