a bit of this is also yesterday’s drawing :)

Now on to writing!

Boy, weekends are killer. I’m trying to ramp up my training a bit more and dive into other things besides the Chris Hart Manga book. I’ve got a ton of books to get through but I also want to get cozy with drawing in Illustrator CS5–so I’m going through everything I can find on that. Plus, since I have a Graphic Novel story in progress, I’ve been trying to spend some time reformatting what I have currently in novel format into Antony Johnston’s standard comic book script format using Scrivener (awesome app)–and, of course, finishing the complete draft of the whole damn story. Ah, good times. It actually is really fun to start thinking about the story in terms of comic panels–it brings a whole new feel to it, more cinematic.

Well, anyway, with all that going on I probably won’t be posting a drawing every day but eventually, you should see some sketches relating to my graphic novel, which I won’t name publicly just yet.

Up View:

3/4 View:

Mark Crilley has some of the best manga drawing videos on YouTube.

The trickiest part I’ve found with drawing manga characters (so far) is the hair. He has a couple of videos on this, which I think are worth the watch:

How To Draw Manga Hair: Boys

How to Draw Manga Hair: Curly Vs. Straight

Got any drawing video suggestions for me?

I wanted to take what I’ve learned so far and compile it into 1 sheet that I could use for creating future character sheets. This shows a bunch of different face poses of a generic female manga character in basic structural mode:

I left the guide markers that I used to sketch these so that I can refer to this sheet in the future. I’m going to make character sheet templates once I start learning other parts of the body :)

OK, looks like I missed this last angle of the face position. The Downward Look:

Ok, this is the last angle that the book (Manga for the Beginner) shows as essential views:

I also had time during my lunch break to make a super quick sketch version, which I find helpful for digesting the practice:

Another view of the girl. This time from a 3/4 view, which is supposedly the most attractive view: