TRIAL BY COMICS - PENCILS

My entry for Trial By Comics Challenge by @kommienezuspadt.

The theme for this week is 'Pencils'. The challenge is (I think) to showcase your penciling skill in the context of pre-production value. You don't even have to finish the drawing. No ink or colors. A sketch, basically. A detailed sketch.

This weeks only requirement is that it’s in pencil […traditional, digital, blue or redline], but we want to see its used in the beginning of world, concept or character construction.

I decided to draw a female character. I didn't plan anything specific for her, so at this point she was just simply going to be a female character. The very first step was to construct a basic human structure. A stick figure with a frontal female pose. The best way to do it is to refer a real human figure to determine suitable ratios between the limbs and the overall body lengths. Once you have learned the anatomy you will knowingly construct the human body with precision and then stylize it in any styles. This is crucial for getting the form without having it to look like it is too abnormal or out of place.

That should do it. Filled the stick figure with some flesh. At this point, you should be able to suggest the female human frame with some basic shapes and their volumes. You should also begin to confirm her body gesture and what she would be like in term of her physical, even psychological characteristics. These characteristics were her underlying qualities that would eventually surface in her pose and body language. The rough sketch would continue to be the primary guideline for the whole process.

The next thing I did was to refine her body shape. There are respective rules that conventionally dictate how to control your lines for both female and male body shapes. For example, men can be conveyed in all rough straight planes of lines whereas women need a a more tender and curvy lines. Failure to have a certain control in this step, however, doesn't necessarily ruin your subject but people often overlook this and find it harder to convincingly draw woman than men. Of course these are standards that can be altered in relativity to different styles and your understanding of human aesthetics.

Once a solid silhouette of her frame was in place, I then added more characteristic details on her physical features. I gave her a set of eyes that seemed to look straight to the audience. Eyes are important too, because we tend to look at them first thing whenever our mind registers a human form. Other details include penciling her hair flow, fingers, other facial features and overall body mass.

I progressively turned her into an intergalactic sci-fi warrior princess. I had this thought of a very tall and timid girl with arched pose because of her low confidence in her height. At first glance, she appeared very innocent but in actuality, she was a merciless badass warrior princess. A twisted shut in like most of Disney's princesses perhaps.

Later, I made some options for her weapons.

Considering what her character was in my mind, I finally found her the perfect weapon. A hybrid of axe and hammer. A blunt wedge for maximum internal injury infliction. She would crack some skulls and pull them with the back hook. She found pleasure in little things like that. The palace's doctor once diagnosed and commented about her. He said, that she's pretty sick, in the truest sense of the word. Not long after she knew that the doctor didn't mean the word 'pretty', his body was seen in the gutter. Or what's left of it.

Ok, maybe that was too much. :D Anyway, for my next step, I made a few adjustments and clean-ups. I liked the sketchiness of it but decided to give it a finished look.

Wrapping up my process, I finalized the details on her.

Done. I am quite satisfied by the end result as it has some rather distinction from my other drawings that I usually made out of routine or from my comfort zone.

Some close-ups on the details:

Process GIF:

Thank you for dropping by!