Miss Generic Face

Hello everyone. Meet Miss Generic Face. You can call her GF for short. I call her that because she can look like anyone. Give her a dark skin tone and a red dot on her forehead and you get...

...an Indian lady!



You give her fair skin and blonde hair, you get...

... a Caucasian lady.



So what is Miss Generic Face for?

She is here so you can learn the basics of drawing a face. Later on, I will elaborate on many other things that you will have to consider when drawing faces, (like how Indians have different facial features from Caucasians) but for now, Miss Generic Face is what we will focus on.

This is because by learning to draw GF, you will not have to worry about complicated things (yet) like trying to make it look like a particular person. You don't have to worry about getting the eyes to look Chinese, or the nose to look European. All you have to do is to get your drawing to look human. Simple.

If I were to teach you how to draw Spiderman, you'd have to worry about making him look Caucasian with American-style muscles. If I were to teach you to draw manga, you'd have to worry about making your drawing look manga-ish (huge eyes, clean strokes).

I want none of that. I only want you to learn how to draw a face with no influences whatsoever. No pressure. Just 2 eyes, 1 nose and 1 mouth.

Once you grasp the basics of drawing the human face, then you can learn all the other variations. You don't even have to copy my style. If you develop your own GF, all the better! After all, we're talking about comics here. There is no one correct way of drawing comics.

They can look like any of these images below:

1. Hajime no Ippo
2. The Meek
3. Doraemon
4. Garfield
5. Superman


The drawing styles are so different, but they're all called one thing - comics!

Now that I've introduced you to Miss GF, in my next post, I will tell you about the general rules I abide by when drawing comics - simplify and exaggerate!

Passion

My good friend asked me once, "How does it feel to be passionate about something?"

If you've never been in love, and you have no clue what you actually like (yet), it's hard to describe. But I'm sure everyone has been in a state where they desperately need... to pee. Imagine you're on a highway and there's this massive traffic jam. You just downed 2 bottles of water and you feel like your bladder is about to burst any second.

Or imagine getting lost in Amsterdam in the middle of winter at night, and there are no toilets in sight. And then you see your guy friend relieve himself at some corner but you can't do that because you're a girl (What? Why would you think this happened to me?).

The point is, when this happens, I bet the only thing you can think of is, "I need a bloody toilet. Right NOW!"

When you finally get to some place with a toilet, it won't matter if Gerard Butler/Jessica Alba winks at you and wants to buy you a drink - your number one priority is to answer the call of nature.

Well then, to be passionate about something is similar; in a way that it's the only thing on your mind no matter what you do. Just multiply that feeling by ∞. For me personally, there is no relief for my passion. I know that once I complete one goal, another one will come up almost immediately.

I literally wake up thinking about the plot for my comic. When I put my head on the pillow at night, I think about how to make my comic world more realistic and drift off to sleep with that thought. And for some strange reason, I get a lot of inspiration in the shower (probably something to do with being refreshed).

Passion is my persistent stalker. It stays with me anywhere and at anytime. It makes me brave and relentless. And there is no relief. When I complete one goal, another one comes up. It keeps me company so I am never lonely.

If you ask me where can one find passion, I'll be honest and say I don't know. I guess I'm lucky because I knew from a very young age that I love to draw. But I'm not here to answer that question. I'm here to help people who already discovered their love for drawing and comics by sharing all that I know of this trade. Sharing makes the world go round after all. You give 10% and you get 90% in return. It's win win!

In my next topic, I will show you my development as a comic artist. All the way from when I was 6 years old, to the Sailormoon era in the 1990s, a confusion of influences in the 2000s until now. There will be a lot of cringe-worthy old drawings, so keep checking! =)

Practice

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

Calvin Coolidge

When I was in school, a lot of my friends approached me and asked me to teach them how to draw. I told them to just copy everything I did. The end result, as you can guess, was one nice drawing and one not so nice drawing.

After several attempts, they would give up and attribute my skills to natural talent. "It's in your blood," they said.

Being a child, I just shrugged and said, "Maybe. I guess I'm lucky."

It wasn't until a few years later that I finally realised how wrong I was.

I have this younger cousin who really admires my drawing, even until now (I adore her because she makes me feel special). Whenever I slept over at her place, she would stare at my sketchbook as I drew. And she would stay things like, "I wish I could draw like you."

"Then try it. It's not hard," I said, very optimistic.

Then I went home. We didn't see each other for a few years. We had our own lives.

When we finally met again, she showed me her sketchbook full of beautiful drawings. I was mesmerised. And from that moment on, I realised that what I had wasn't natural talent at all. It was years of practice, years of accumulated experience and endless drawings. When I leafed through her sketchbook full of drawings, it felt like I was looking at myself.

"I'm completely addicted to drawing. When I see pretty pictures, I want to draw them. I even draw in Math class!" she said.

She sounded exactly like me.

This completely changed the way I looked at myself back then. I began to appreciate all the times I spent just drawing. When other children stopped drawing and played other games, I kept at it, just because it made me happy. Drawing was never practice for me. Drawing to me was as fun as playing video games or going out for a cycle with my friends. And since my parents used to bring back heaps of papers from the office, I would (with their permission) take the ones that were empty on one side. I never needed a drawing block, I had unlimited supply of blank paper.



Natural talent without practice is like an unpolished gem. It might look prettier than other normal stones, but it's of no use they way it is.

But practice and persistence can create so many things. If you want to create a comic, and you've tried drawing for months and you're still not happy with your current skills, don't throw in the towel just yet! Nobody said it was easy. Just know that all the amazing artwork you see in books, websites and even graffiti comes from practice.

The only thing that can make practising bearable or even fun is passion. If you have passion, no feat is too big I say. Guess what the subject of my next topic is? ;)

Below is a drawing of one of my favourite webcomic artists, Sarah Ellerton. I put this image here to show how much she improved her artwork because she never stopped drawing. And what better way to improve your skills if not by committing yourself to a project?

Image 1 is from her first webcomic, Inverloch.
Image 2 is from her second one, Phoenix Requiem.
The third one is a character from Phoenix Requiem and it's on her DeviantArt account.

Click image for a larger version

To appreciate the awesomeness of these images in full, I suggest you visit the links below. And while you're at it, why not start reading her comics? I have!

Inverloch - Completed
Phoenix Requiem - Almost at the end, you've got nothing to lose by reading it now
Dreamless - Completed

Hello!

Pleased to meet you =) Thank you for visiting my blog, so let me commence with a quick introduction of myself.

I am a 24-year-old recent graduate, trying to find my way in this world just like everyone else. I love drawing, ever since I could hold a pencil and I have a natural flair for writing. So the product is this niche blog where I can write about the thing I love most in this world - comics!

This blog will focus on 2 things as of now:-

a) Very simple tutorials on comic creation - what I've learned so far.
b) The different tools and ways that artists use to create their amazing comics - there is no such thing as one ultimate pen/pencil/brush/tablet that will give you drawing super powers.

I have some rough ideas for this blog, so just bear with me while I build this thing from scratch. I hope that by sharing what little I know of comic-making, I'd be able to help anyone out there who wants to try creating their own comic.

Passion is vital in any undertaking, because it will fuel your practice sessions, research, initiative, ideas - basically everything. So don't be put off if you feel that you cannot draw. No one knows how to draw the moment they were born. When you see fantastic artwork, it's the result of practice, practice, practice.

Which is why for my next post, the topic will be about practice =)

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Penguins are cute.