Stylized Anatomy for Comics

Welcome to this fascinating, value-packed course, where you will learn all about figure drawing stylized for comics. Your instructor, René Córdova, will give you an overview of the course contents and all that you can look forward to here!

While it may seem pretty easy to find references on the internet, it can also be time-consuming and sometimes frustrating when you can’t find the exact pose or angle that you are looking for.

René recommends a better way to get the references you need that’s also a lot more fun: Take your own photos of family and friends! In this lesson, he’ll give you tips on how and where to do so and what to look for.

1.1

How We Can Find Our References

03:34

Follow along with René, as he shows you his process for drawing a complete male and female turnaround: front, back and side views.

You will review the basic structures of passive poses to help you keep the body proportions in mind when drawing action poses later.

René will also share insight on the differences in the male and female body shapes, give you tips on how to draw proportionately and show you how he creates clean line art on top of a sketch.

2.1

Men and Women Front

08:58

2.2

Men and Women Side

06:36

2.3

Men and Women Back

06:58

2.4

Clean Female

10:56

2.5

Clean Male

16:22

Go over the structures and forms of the male and female heads in this lesson. René gives advice on recommended ways to sketch, drawing in various styles, why sketching fast is important and the advantages of using pens over pencils.

You’ll also learn cool tips such as how to draw features projecting outward (such as the nose and lips), make your characters look older or younger, create a base structure first before adding features and hair, and more!

3.1

Male Head

07:28

3.2

Female Head

07:37

3.3

Sketching Female Heads

05:41

3.4

Sketching Male Heads

03:17

Some artists tend to shy away from drawing hands and feet, as they can seem daunting to draw.

However, with René’s guidance in breaking down their forms in a simplified and geometric manner and explaining the essential aspects to focus on, you’ll find them much easier to tackle!

Understanding how the hands and feet work plays a big part in knowing how to draw them correctly.

4.1

Hands

11:05

4.2

Feet

18:16

4.3

Sketching Feet

05:21

In this final lesson, René will show you his methods of drawing two comic figures from scratch, using references for inspiration and guides.

First, he will teach you how to outline the shapes and lines that form the structure of the body before drawing it, making it much easier to draw the same figure at different perspectives and in various poses.

Sometimes quantity is more important than quality, as is the case with sketching thumbnails. You’ll learn why this is important and how to go about drawing thumbnails to prepare for the next stage.

René will then move on to adding the clean lines and details to both figures, explaining how he thinks when drawing comic characters and what to keep in mind.

6.1

Drawing with References

17:13

6.2

Clean References

13:14

6.3

Quick Sketches

03:25

6.4

Final Lines Male

16:16

6.5

Final Lines Female

07:57

In this section, you’ll discover some handy exercises that you can do on a regular basis to improve your figure drawing skills over time. René himself does this regularly as a way to keep learning and growing as an artist. Have fun!

1.1

Exercise 1

02:46

1.2

Exercise 2

03:12

1.3

Exercise 3

02:37