Common questions

These are all things I have trouble with, so I thought other people might as well. If any of you have more specific questions, feel free to ask.

Doing studies

So, I mentioned that I spend most mornings doing studies. This is the type of thing I do. I always break my character down into 3 simple parts like in my "girl" demo. I do the exact same thing for all characters.

How I draw comics

I start with a thumbnail pass where I just work out the main compositions and acting.


Next I do a rough pass. The most important part is to incorporate your text into the composition. I always put the text in before I start drawing. Make sure you design your text bubbles with enough white space around the letters. I also turn off my rough layer and check the thumbnail to make sure I didn't loose the head tilts and the pose as I draw.


I like to work out all the props and characters as much as I can before I hit the drawing, but I didn't have time to figure out this gun. I'll probably do a finished color drawing of it on another page and then come back and redraw it. After that, I'll go to color, I might make slight modifications to the drawings, or even clean them up a little, but the more I clean them up. the worse they tend to get. For the most part, I'll go straight from this to the color.

More on shapes

Sometimes I like to forget about gesture and form and go right in for the shapes. This won't work if you don't have a strong understanding of form and gesture and it can sort of become a cheat for actually knowing how to draw. I fell into this trap for a while. Basically, you won't be able to move the character around. You just learn shapes that work for certain poses and angles. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can't really design nice shapes if you only think about gesture and form. I sometimes take my sketchbook and sketch people at a coffee shop, or from the car at a red light. This is my approach. It's very fast and you can learn to get nice natural poses instead of those "posed" life drawing poses.

A word of encouragement to "bad" artist

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a "good" artist yet, just not "bad". But, I've only been not "bad" for a very short time. As little as 3 years ago, I was a horribly bad artist. Now, if I messed with a drawing for long enough, I could make you think I was ok at drawing, but it was extremely frustrating and difficult. If I had to draw the same character in multiple poses, it really showed that I was "bad". And if I had to draw something really fast, it was so embarrassing That I will never show any of those drawings to anyone.

Some people are naturally talented at drawing. I was not one of those people. So, in 2005 I finally just got fed up with being bad at drawing and started studying. For about 2 years I just copied stuff and took drawing classes. I think I've paused every frame of every Disney movie and copied the drawing. To this day, I still start my day with 1-2 hours of studying. I still make really bad drawings that I don't show to people. I am constantly forgetting the basics and having to relearn them. I have whole days or even weeks where I can't do a single good drawing. But, as a whole, I've come a very long way from where I was and hope still go a lot further.

One of the most inspiring things was seeing that other artist who I consider to be "great" were horrible when they were as old as 25 or even 30. Now again, some people are "great" when they are 15. I've seen it and it can be very discouraging to the rest of us who are not naturally talented. But there is hope. So to all my fellow "Bad" artist, who don't have any talent, don't give up hope. You can make up for it with hard work.

drawing girls

More on my favorite shape