50 Pages HANDS - COMPLETE

 So I filled 50 pages of hand studies, those are A4 pages, so I usually did 2 pages in my A5 sketchbook for every page. Am I better at drawing hands? Maybe..who knows. Definitely not worse :P

First are some 30 second timed poses:

then untimed drawings of my own hand:

Hands + Artist study

INK STUDY #13 - Buscema - PEN NIB

 Back to the pen nib on this one from a. Conan comic, this one was inked by Ernie Chan. I'm still deciding whose ink work I like best on Buscema's Conan work. And I think after Big John himself, I really like Ernie Chan's work the most. He seemed to get better as he went along, dong some really dynamic ink work later on this run.

Of course my own copy is terrible as always, practice makes better! The aim is to do 50 of these.

I always include the pencil sketch, to show that I don't really do a very cleaned up study, just enough detail to work on top with the pen. 

Last step I used the Sharpie for the blacks, the original piece had interesting texture which I tried to replicate

INK STUDY #12 Buscema - Brush

 Too tired today to do a study, so I rushed it.  Used some really, really old Tipp-Ex on those lines that crossed over.

INK STUDY 11 : J. Buscema

 NEW TOOL!

I bought a little set of Watercolour brushes in smaller sizes, 0, 2 and 4. Below I sampled the zero brush, which seems to be the right size for this sketchbook (an A5 size - Bristol paper). Though I still cheaped out on using SHARPIE for the black fills.

So if you are struggling with this. Remember: 

1 - Work on Bristol board paper! 2 - Get a small sized watercolour brush for smaller pages! 

INK STUDY #10

Hands

 some hands (some terrible, some ok :P)

INK STUDY #9

 Got too eager to erase, and the ink wasn't dry yet, so it smudged :/

INK STUDY #8

 This one is done with a nib pen. basically brush vs nib seems to depend on the size/detail of the drawing. If you look at a comic book from the 70s, the artists drew 4 times that size, so if it looks like brush and you draw roughly the same size of the comic, you'll have a really hard time! :P 

There we go, line drawing complete, the rest I leave to my sharpie.

Hands - 3o secs + Artist Study

 30 second timed poses

I really believe it's essential do slower studies before doing these quick ones, but it's really good to force yourself to create shorthands (no pun intended) for drawing quick hands. It also exposes gaps in your knowledge to yourself by going quick. 

 Second page of these is better, it always takes a while to get into these quick ones. 

Also did a couple of artist studies: Jon Buscema on Thor (inked by Coletta)

Anatomy Study - QUADS

 Using the FORCE ANATOMY book, studying the legs.

Learning how to ink : Brush

This is proving really hard for me, learning how to ink. I am not too bad with a pen, but with brush I am terrible :P Part of it, I think is that I work on crappy, textured paper. They always recommend Bristol board, so I'll try and get a Bristol pad specifically for ink.

I started by doing these marks from the book: How to draw the Marvel Way. This is where I noticed the ink doesn't come out very well on this paper...that, and I suck :P

I then did a practice page on a figure (Loki drawn by Buscema)

INK STUDY : Brush Practice

 I think of all the tools I'll probably enjoy the brush the most, but just need to get some practice with it. Shaky line control and I often don't have enough ink or too much. I like the thicker line weight though.

This is a study of a panel by Gene Colan (inked by Dick Ayers)

Ink Practice #2

 I really should've picked a better image to draw from, but practice is practice, it's about putting in the mileage sometimes :)

Original image from Jack Kirby - Captain America

INK Practice

 SHARPIE and Pigment Liner