Mahran Teaches Comic Book Penciling - Mentor: Mahran - *** CLASS IS FULL!! ***

[SpawnSC]

Mahran has offered to mentor me on comic book penciling. I look forward to learning and growing in this field of art and can't wait to get started.

A little bit about myself..

I'm 26 years old and recently started to get back into art again since high school! so i'm way way behind and forgot a lot. I've been back into for about 2 months now. I'm very into comic book style of art and love how you can tell a story through art.

Wieringo has given some of the best advice to all artist..

"My best advice and encouragement to aspiring artists is to never give up, never let anyone tell you that you can't reach your goal." -Wieringo

I've really put that quote in my head and his right in every way.

Some of my inspirations are:

Todd McFarlane
Greg Capullo
Jim Lee
Michael Turner
Nat Jones
Frank Cho
and many more..


Mahran where shall we begin?

[Mahran]

Hey, lets get this thread going then.
I've done a few Joe kubert penciling assignments myself and I've found them very beneficial. So lets do something similar to those here.
Alright, first assignment...
Draw a character sheet for Spiderman/Peter Parker.
First, get some good reference on how spidey looks from the front, side and back. Same for peter (choose any style you like)
Then do 4 drawings:
1- spidey, full figure, front view
2- spidey, full figure, side view
3- Peter parker (with no mask on) face only, front view
4- Peter parker (with no mask on) face only, side view

have fun!

[SpawnSC]

working on it

[SpawnSC]

im having a bit of trouble, maybe i'm trying to be to perfect. ill scan what i have when i get home.

[Mahran]

Hey
No worries, it'll probably be better than u think

Did this panel a couple o days ago...

[SpawnSC]

ok.. i'm not proud of these at all. i know they have many faults and thats why i'm here to improve and grow. Sorry it took so long but with Christmas shopping and all it got me a bit behind! Plus I hate drawing Spider Mans costume lol

[Eddie_L]

Here's my take on spidey

[Mahran]

Great work Spawnsc and Eddie! Give me one or two days to go over these in photoshop.
In the meantime, don't put down that pencil

[Mahran]

Merry Christmas all!!!
New man will be joining us, welcome "chimp"

We're gonna be doing a bit of work on faces these coming weeks, so don't stop drawing 'em heads. Either draw from a good comic book reference or do a little portrait work, it REALLY helps in getting a feel for the 3d structure of things.
This is my latest portrait. 2B pencil on bristol board. Not very happy with everything I did with it, but all in all, not a complete disaster.

[chimp]

Hey all!

Heres the two of spiderman, i'll do peter parker later tonight

I couldn't find any references of him standing up still, just the typical dynamic jumping and webslinging, as to be expected i suppose

[Odouri]

is this class available for all to join? may i join?

[SpawnSC]

is this class available for all to join? may i join?

That depends on how much Mahran can handle, because his the one who has to grade all the work. If nothing else, maybe he can start a second session later on and pm the people who were interested.

[Mahran]

is this class available for all to join? may i join?

I think I would just be able to squeeze you in. So, yeah, welcome aboard Odouri! I really do have to put the time and effort into these critiques that I'll be doing, so I don't think I'll be able to take on anyone else after that.
If u like, why don't you get going with the spidey assignment and I'll go over it as soon as I'm done with Eddie L and Chimp.

Spawnsc, will have your critiqued assignment up in a few hours. Good work there, buddy

[Mahran]

Spawnsc, great work on the spidey assignment. Very good use of reference. Very nice rendering on the blue/black parts of spidey's costume! And yes, I agree, drawing the webs well isn't easy at all. If done well tho, they really help in giving spiderman a good 3d feel. Will try to put up a mini tutorial for that soon I've drawn in blue over the areas that still need a bit of work.

If you guys prefer just typed crits (no blue line corrections over artwork), let me know (Don't mind either really, whatever makes you guys happy). All in all, Very good stuff. Keep practicing from reference (Mcfarlane, 'Ringo, Jim Lee, whatever style you like). We'll all improve a lot faster if we try and learn from the top artists' lines and rendering techniques...

[javvie-pl]

Ah, I love an idea. Mahran, I beg you can I join here ;_;? I always wanted to do some exercises in comic drawing and designing. If you won't now, I will waiting for my chance, cause I will watching this thread

[SpawnSC]

Spawnsc, great work on the spidey assignment. Very good use of reference. Very nice rendering on the blue/black parts of spidey's costume! And yes, I agree, drawing the webs well isn't easy at all. If done well tho, they really help in giving spiderman a good 3d feel. Will try to put up a mini tutorial for that soon I've drawn in blue over the areas that still need a bit of work.

If you guys prefer just typed crits (no blue line corrections over artwork), let me know (Don't mind either really, whatever makes you guys happy). All in all, Very good stuff. Keep practicing from reference (Mcfarlane, 'Ringo, Jim Lee, whatever style you like). We'll all improve a lot faster if we try and learn from the top artists' lines and rendering techniques...

Thanks Mahran! I prefer the blue lines because i'm a visual learner. I will practice from some more references and post them here.

[chimp]

Heres peter, the one on the left came out horrible, the right isn't too bad.


I suppose this would be appropriate here also, as it was a study using reference More of a still life though >_>

[Mahran]

Eddie
Very good work there! I really like your figure proportions. Spidey looks tall and imposing (which is good). Also, you have a good feel for muscle structure. You probably know this already, but spiderman (the average sized comic book hero) is about 8 heads tall. Superman would be 9-10 heads tall, which makes him look more big 'n' muscular than spidey. BTW, regular people would range from 6.5 to 7.5 heads tall. I've added a few suggestions in blue and red for u to try out...

[Mahran]

Ah, I love an idea. Mahran, I beg you can I join here ;_;? I always wanted to do some exercises in comic drawing and designing. If you won't now, I will waiting for my chance, cause I will watching this thread

Welcome aboard Javvie-pl

[Eddie_L]

Eddie
Very good work there! I really like your figure proportions. Spidey looks tall and imposing (which is good). Also, you have a good feel for muscle structure. You probably know this already, but spiderman (the average sized comic book hero) is about 8 heads tall. Superman would be 9-10 heads tall, which makes him look more big 'n' muscular than spidey. BTW, regular people would range from 6.5 to 7.5 heads tall. I've added a few suggestions in blue and red for u to try out...

Thanks Mahran, I would try your suggestions. I'm trying to learn anatomy and muscle placements, and they are hard!! But I'm moving along slowly. Can't wait for the next lesson!!

[Mahran]

You're welcome Eddie L.

Chimp, am working on your assignment. Should be finished with it quite soon, good work there!

[Mahran]

Chimp, first of all, I'm really happy with your sense of form. You've given your drawings quite a bit of depth with your shading, good work there. You are thinking and drawing 3 dimensionally and that is very important, keep it up. As I've done with the rest of the guys, the blue lines are drawn over the areas that still need a bit of work...

Still life: Very good textures! In fact, why don't you post the methods you used for rendering the different textures in that still life . I'm always interested in seeing how other people render things in pencil
Things to work on:
1- Your contours: they're a little bit jagged
2- cast shadows: sadly, no magic formula here, just careful observation and lots of practice

[Mahran]

Hey all
Some of you guys have mentioned having trouble drawing spiderman's costume. Put together a mini tutorial for you. If you guys find this helpful, let me know and I'll try to post some more in the future.

[SpawnSC]

nice tutorial when is the next assignment?

[Mahran]

Hey Spawnsc, here's the next one...
Assignment two:
This is a big splash page (a panel filling the whole page), which would be ideal for the opening page in a comic book.
Use an A4 piece of paper (bristol board is best).

1-Spiderman is webslinging in the foreground.
2-He is closely followed by Felicia Hardy (the black cat).
3-The background is New York by night (or similar city).

We've already done spiderman before so you guys know what his costume looks like from several angles. For this assignment, you should first find good references for Felicia Hardy and New York (do a google image search for both). The other thing is to try and use proper one-point or two-point perspective for the background buildings. Drawing convincing backgrounds is really important, so realistic looking buildings is a must for this assignment.
Have fun and PM me if you have any problems

[Mr.Dabit]

I'm back. Just had some thinking to do. I realized I'm not that bad of an artist. Just got discouraged. I like the Spiderman stuff a lot too. I want to join in, if you don't mind. We could still go through email, but I like competition. You want me to do assignment one and two, or just start with two?

[Mahran]

I'm back. Just had some thinking to do. I realized I'm not that bad of an artist. Just got discouraged. I like the Spiderman stuff a lot too. I want to join in, if you don't mind. We could still go through email, but I like competition. You want me to do assignment one and two, or just start with two?

Hey, hey!
It's good to hear from u again. Please don't get discouraged, everybody goes through these bad patches. The thing to remember is that while some of the top artists are mega talented, the majority however, had to put in ungodly amounts of hours to get where they are now. You have very good potential, so don't worry about stuff.
You can go ahead with assignment two if you like, seeing as we've already done something similar to one

Let me know if you have any problems

[Peter Berkovski]

Hello Mahran, I hope there is little chance to join here,I realy realy wish someday to begin comic book artist,please please please can I join?

[xcmiller]

Any way I can get in on this? I can help crit a bit since I'm a big comic guy and I'd like to go along with these exercises if possible even if you can't take the time to mentor me as well.

[Paperdoll]

Hmmm... seeing the thread title this might be a pointless post but since it looks like it's exactly what I was looking for... if there's any chance that I could get into this, I'd really appreciate it, since it's one of my aspirations to be able to do my comic book art... but eh it's all good I still like to check out these threads, always good advice.