Weird Is The Best

Sketching ideas and character design for a new comic.

When I started drawing a couple years ago, I didn't realise how many bad or quick sketches an artist makes before getting it right.

It's all about practice, but rarely anyone shares ugly in-progress sketches. What I see more often are pretty in progress sketches.

I find it so much more freeing to assume my first sketch will suck and that's it's just work in progress and part of the process.

That feeling when cover design doesn't go too badly! ✨

Here's what the "Traveling Circus" comic might look like.

Deviled eggs or devils on horses?

Don't forget it's zinetober !

I'm struggling to find time this year, due to many projects on the go on top of my day job, so here are some from 2021 (when I completed all 31 zine prompts).

You can find most of them in my online shop (or if you can't find them, drop me a message):

Yeah I took some actual classes in meatspace a long time ago, a painting class and a life drawing class.

But most of the stuff I've learned is from online courses and tutorials. I did a few really good ones on Schoolism, like the Kris Pearn Storyboard class (which is very old now) and two Sam Nielsen courses on color.

But I also watched a lot of stuff that frankly was just a waste of time and money. I'm not going to name any but I have to say that a lot of modern "courses" are just recorded Zoom sessions with several artists very loosely talking about the subject at hand. Those suck.

A great example of a properly structured course that covers both theory and practical examples is the one I bring up all the time: Toniko Pantoja's animation course. I consider that the gold standard of online courses.

Also I've done and still do a lot of practice, I do half a page of these every day most days:

These are with short time limits and mostly from photo reference but I also copy drawings that I like to try to understand them, there are two Chels in the bottom right.

Here's some progress of my doodle page.