25 Nov A Guide to Comic Book Drawing: How Can the World Wide Web Help You?
Here, I’m only going to point you towards some fantastic resources that you’ll find on the Internet to help you draw better comics. There’s a little bit of everything on my list, from basic drawing and full-on comic tutorials, to manga and illustration inspirations, as well as video tutorials. Take your pick.
I hope these resources lead you to your own online resources. There’s a lot of good stuff floating around on the world wide web to inspire you.
Comic Art and Manga Inspiration
This UK magazine is a fantastic place to discover indie comics and illustrations from around UK and the rest of the world. And the best part is, you don’t need a subscription to browse.
If you’re a fan of classic superhero comic books, this Tumblr is for you. It focuses on bringing high resolution Marvel comic pages that may rock your boat.
Imagine FX is a resource for all kinds of visual art, with great articles, tutorials, news and inspiration on everything from illustration to VFX and typography. Type “Comics” in the search bar and you’ll find a whole host of comics-related stuff.
This is where you go when you want to find out what’s going on in the world of comics, with news, reviews and previews.
Limeshot Design is a design company that also shares inspiring artwork on their website. I particularly wanted to point you in the direction of these fantastic manga inspirations they’ve drawn from around the web.
The website for all manga and anime news, as well as some general interest Japanese news that will appeal to Otaku people influenced by Japanese pop culture.
Websites with Tutorials for Drawing
This is the website of Brian Duey, a pencil artist who has been featured on Pencils.com. Duey is known for his portraitures, but if you follow his blog, you’ll find plenty of useful tutorials on subjects like negative drawing, face drawing, eye drawing, nose drawing, still life and more. Whether or not you draw realistic comic characters and scenes, I think it’s good to brush up your general drawing skills with tutorials like these.
If you’re inspired by manga and anime, and want to learn the finer points of this style to use in your graphics novels and comics, check out Manga Tutorials.
Drawspace offers drawing lessons that you can take for free, in the form of tutorials. Or you can sign up for guided courses with artists. It’s a great tool for those who are just learning to draw, or those who want to brush up on certain types of artwork that they’re unfamiliar with.
YouTube Channel Tutorials
These high quality, well-produced drawing tutorial videos cover everything from drawing portraits to anatomy to caricatures and more. I highly recommend them for beginners learning to draw.
Xia Taptara’s channel is not just about drawing girls, but about the digital drawing of characters. It’s not for beginners. There are some fantastic digital painting tips and tutorials as well, which may benefit graphic novel creators.
This is one of my favorite YouTube channels for learning how to draw and paint with digital software. The artist behind Sycra also frequently interviews other artists to give you perspectives of how different people work with the same medium.
Published comic artist Christopher Hart has his own Youtube channel with over 75,000 subscribers. It’s great for beginners.
Drawfee brings a creative and fun spin on drawing bizarre creatures and objects. The idea is to think out of the box, come up with some dumb ideas, and maybe inspire you to make your own mistakes until you create something you like.
Illustration Inspirations
It’s easy to spend hours on this website, drooling over the gorgeous artwork illustrations, stunning comic book covers, paintings both modern and classic, and the loads of tutorials, classes and resources that are available for illustrators. Just make sure you actually do spend more time drawing than you do browsing the site!
This blog brings inspiring scans of 20th century book covers, comic covers, art book pages, technique pages, children’s book pages, paperback cover art, illustrations of automobiles, watercolors, sketches and a lot more in large, high resolution images. While the blog’s last post was in August, 2016, there’s a lot of old material that will inspire you to get your own creativity flowing.
This website curates images of anything to do with visual art from around the web. You can get inspired by the media in the Illustration gallery. But don’t skip the other categories like Fine Arts, Game Design, Graphic Design and even Fashion. Inspiration comes from unexpected sources.
Communities where you can Participate
What I love about Illustration Friday is the weekly art challenge that it runs. The site encourages its readers to send in a subject for the week. Illustrators are then invited to send in their interpretations of the subject. You’ll find a melting pot of styles, media and perspectives on the website. Challenge yourself by trying to send in something every week, to keep your game up.
Named as a play on the term “pub crawl’, Sketchcrawl is a community that encourages you to participate in a sketching marathon. That’s a day on which you draw everything you see. You can then share your work with the online community.
You probably know of DeviantArt. It’s a great place to see what other people are drawing, participate in challenges, maintain your portfolio, receive feedback and generally get inspired.
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