Day 10: Practice Drawing Heads

Well as the title implies, I spent my time drawing trying to improve on my ability to draw heads. I started out by drawing some various heads I found in a comic book, trying to imitate what the original artist had done. Nothing too glamorous but I've gotta share today's work!

Practising Heads

Practising Heads by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

After finishing those, I decided get in some practice with drawing the head from different angles/poses.

Form Practice

Practice Male Head Structure by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

As I said, not the most glamorous or exciting, but that's what I did today, I've said from the start I'm trying to get better so some day's will be like this!

Day 9: Spider-man Coloured

As the title says, today I coloured the lineart/sketch of Spider-man that I drew yesterday. I used a different method to colour him compared to the deadpool I did. This time I used different layers of progressively darker/lighter shades of blue/red to convey depth, just trying to experiment.

Day 9 [12-4-12]: Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man

Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Let me know what you think, as always I would love feedback!

Day 8: Spider-man Returns!

One of the many things I want to improve on, is my form/figure drawing, and I don't mean being able to replicate someone else's illustration. Most of my drawing has been from someone else's work, and though I definitely think it is worthwhile and teaching me lots, I don't want it to be a 'crutch' for me.

Spider-man's costume is easy enough to draw (and I don't even have to try and draw a face - though I should be practising that more as well), and that enables me to focus on drawing a completely unique and original pose from my imagination. Not that I'm trying to draw an amazingly dynamic pose, just practising the basics.

Spider-man Sketch

Spider-man Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Spider-man Lineart

Spider-man Lineart by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART


I hope to get this coloured, as well as the final details (need to add costume webbing still) completed soon. As you'll have seen from earlier posts, not all my work is taken to the same point of completion, and that is simply because this is just practice and learning. Some work's I will continue to take further into the process, but not all, though I hope to revisit past sketches in the future as I get better and can improve them.

As always, I'm very open to criticism, comments and advice. Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog!

Don't forget to check me out on DeviantArt and follow me on Twitter !

Day 7 [12-2-12]: Deadpool

As I often do my drawing in the evenings, I'll likely have a one day delay on most of my posts. I think that also allows me to think a little clearer, and gives me a little more time for self evaluation.

Anyways, we're on day 7- it's been a week and I think I pulled out my best yet. Late evening on day 6, I did a rough sketch with my green pencil, but it wasn't till the next day that the picture really came together. Here's the basic sketch after I brought it together

Deadpool Sketch

Deadpool Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Having been quite happy with how that turned out, I decided to try my hand at doing the line work for it, as that is a very important part of comic book art.

Deadpool Lineart

Deadpool Lineart by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Again happy with this step (although looking back I feel I could have emphasized the line work more in general), I decided to take it to the next stage and try to paint the image. Using photoshop and a very basic knowledge of how to colour comics, I set the base colours and used the dodge/burn tool for my high/lowlights. I hope to get a hang of truly painting properly in photoshop, though I'm having some trouble using a mouse for it. Anyways, I'm still happy with how the final product turned out!

Deadpool: Merc with a mouth

Deadpool: merc with a mouth by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Again, I'm very happy with the turnout, although I still want to learn a lot more about photoshop painting. I added the speech bubble just for a little flavour, most of Deadpool's fandom is due to his... interesting take on things.

Anyways, thanks for checking out my work. You can check my gallery out over on Deviantart, I'm hoping to get any and all feedback I can, just want to keep getting better!

All the best

Daily Challenge

So I've always loved everything to do with video-games and movies - and all the art and graphics that goes in to them as well - but I also have a long standing passion for comics & good books. At a young age I always wanted to be a comic book artist, and used to draw  super heroes and villains constantly.

Drawing was something I was always pretty good at, though I never took classes or was too dedicated to it. Recently I picked up a new cheap sketch book, and started trying to draw again - and to my surprise I found I'm better than I was before, even years after (I attribute to a better understanding of anatomy, and values such as depth perception).

I've read on many websites and forums that the best way to improve artistic ability is simply to practice, so I committed to making time each day to work on my drawing. No matter how good or bad they turn out, I'm keeping track of each day's work and progress, and hopefully will get better each day!

So without further delay I'll update my progress so far:

Day 1 [11-26-12]: Female Blood Elf

Blood Elf by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 2 [11-27-12: Lara Croft Sketch

Lara Croft Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 3 [11-28-12]: Spider-man Sketch

Spider-man Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 4a [ 11-29-12]: Spartan Warrior Sketch

Spartan Warrior by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 4b [11-29-12]: Steampunk Girl Sketch

Steampunk Girl Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 5 [ 11-30-12]: Exalted Monk Rough Sketch

Exalted Monk Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

Day 6 [12-1-12]: Female Warrior Sketch

Female Warrior Sketch by ~HiringHenchmen on deviantART

I don't claim to be a fantastic artist, but simply hope to improve through persistence and practice. Check out my page on Deviantart.com and please give me your comments and criticisms, hope you enjoy!