What a productive day - Feels awesome!
I had one goal -- to knock out the entire Hair Workshop for the Character Creator Course from start to finish… I knew I was in it for the long haul.
And here’s the end result…
Given I was narrating the entire demonstration the whole way through, I was expecting something a little less refined – but I’m super happy with the outcome and I had a lot of fun putting it all together.
Safe to say this particular series of lessons will teach you pretty much all you need to know about drawing, styling and rendering the hair of your Comic Book Characters.
I didn’t actually intend on creating these for the Character Creator Course. But I figured why not delve even deeper into the very components that go into illustrating a female comic book character?
So before I knew it, I had a giant list of Comic Art Classes planned to include in the course… and by giant, I mean right now I’m looking at a list of 20 different lessons covering the construction of the female head and facial features, anatomy, rendering, shading and coloring.
Because as insightful as E’s design demo is – I felt it merely gave you the method. But in order to put that method into action you’ll need the ingredients to do so! And that’s what these Workshops represent.
One of my big take-aways from E’s head and hair demo was the realization of how important it is to balance out all that detail wisely. You might know how to render well – but knowing when, where and how much rendering to place into your art work is key.
A huge obstacle I always used to run into – specifically when it came to drawing hair – was throwing in ultra-high levels of detail left, right and center, without any consideration of a light source. This caused my intricately detailed hair do’s to appear visually incoherent – and it completely flattened out the volume and depth it should have had.
Now I always take great care to ensure that I use my ability to render sparingly – placing it only where it’s needed. I mean – you can have as much rendering and detail as you want, but it has got to be balanced and the forms you’re working upon must read visually from a distance.
To render hair accurately, in a way that gives it a little lift, a great tip that helps me out is to try to break down the hair style itself into broad, geometrical forms.
Really think about how the individual clumps of hair conform to an overall flow of movement to give the hair style its shape. Not only will that make it easier to lay down the rendering across those layers of hair, but it’ll help you figure out where they need to go according to the lighting direction.
I still have to monitor myself as I work, because honestly, I’ve got a really bad habit of taking the detail in my art work way too far. There’s a fine line between visually desirable and visually disorientating.
Balance is the key work of today. Balance of detail. Balance of rendering. Balance of value and contrast. If you can hit each at just the right amount and use them to describe your art work in the best way possible you’ll end up with an illustration that reads well.
As you can see, E is yet again the main star of our first edition to the Character Creator Course set. It’s been an awesome experience to refine her design to the nth degree throughout these Workshops. Feels like I’m getting to know her better and better as I create these lessons.
Obviously – it only makes me more eager to start on her Comic Book Short!
I’m going to set up a VIP page for anyone interested in the Character Creator Course – I’ll have a bit more info on that a little later though.
For now, I hope you enjoy this sneak preview at what’s to come in the course – should have some more updates coming your way again real soon!
If you’ve got any questions about the Character Creator Course, or suggestions on what you’d like to see inside it – hit me up in the comments section below. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
-Clayton
