Batgirl: A Step-by-step Drawing

[Bruce Lee]

A few of you have expressed an interest in a me posting a step-by-step sort of thing. Well, I'm trying to catch up on some pencil drawings that I owe to people who pre-ordered my sketchbook this year, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to scan one of the drawings in stages, from start to finish. The drawings done for those who pre-ordered are done on bristol at 4.5" x 6". That's not a huge amount of space, so generally these sketches tend to be head and shoulder affairs, but I do try to pull the camera back some and show a little more when I can--especially when I'm drawing a female character. What fun is a head & shoulder shot of a larger than life babe?

This particular drawing is a rendered pencil drawing of Batgirl. My objective is to show as much of her as I can in the shot, while trying to keep her large enough to allow me some room to do some smudge/smear style shadowing. Not easy to do on a 4.5 X 6 inch piece of paper, but I'll give it a shot. I know I'm going to have to do some figure cropping, so I'll do my best to crop limbs, etc as best I can, avoiding cropping at the joints if possible. Sometimes you just have to make some concessions. The nature of working like a pro means you have to know when "good enough" really is just that. Anyway, let's get started, and see how it goes...

1) CONCEPT. You can't start a drawing without knowing what you're going to draw--right? At this point, I know I'm aiming to draw Batgirl. I'd like her pose to seem natural, and I want to do some lighting on the figure. I'll probably add some sort of background in the drawing, provided that there's room. Maybe she'll be in the Batcave...

2) GESTURE AND UNDER-DRAWING. The first thing I like to do is work out the pose via a loose gesture drawing on a piece of scrap paper. I do this in two stages usually. I start off doing something fast with a pencil. I place the head and spine, then I begin hanging parts of the body off of the spine. I rough in the ribcage, shoulders, hips and so forth. Once the placement of the collar bones and shoulders are figured out, I can worry about placement of her breasts , and fleshing out her arms. In regards to the head, I map out the basic location of her eyes, nose and mouth. I'm not trying to do much more than that at this point.

The second part of this gesture phase involves refinement of the form. I usually do this with either a pen or marker, working right over the loose pencils. I'm going to be doing the finished drawing on a different sheet of paper, so it doesn't matter that I'm using a pen or not. Once I get the gesture tightened up with the pen the way I want, I'm ready for the next step.

Hmm. I can see right now that I'm going to have to crop Batgirl's left arm. I'm not crazy about the notion, but I'll try to do it mid-forearm, so that the design isn't compromised too much. Cropping at the wrist or elbow would be bad. Very bad. But I think I can make this work.

GESTURE STAGE IMAGE:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl1.jpg


3) TRANSFERRING AND BREAKING IT DOWN. Now that I have my gesture drawing/underdrawing, I'm ready to transfer the image onto bristol board via a lightbox. I pencil onto the bristol very lightly during this stage, as I'm going to fine-tune some things along the way. I just need the basic image on bristol to start with. Basically I'm transferring the rough onto the bristol board, using my scrap paper gesture drawing as a guidelines. If I want, I can deviate from my gesture, or I can stick to it as closely as I like.

During this stage, I am focusing on working out the basic figure shape, and refining the anatomy and details a little more. I begin working out facial details and other bits of anatomy too, but I keep the pencil work faint and avoid baring down hard as I sketch. Light pencilling is the name of the game for now.

BREAKDOWN STAGE:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl2.jpg


4) CONTOURS. When I've worked out the basic anatomy to a point where I'm comfortable, I then begin adding darker pencil (HB) contour lines. This is the stage where I will begin to make executive decisions as I will be defining Batgirl's facial features and her anatomy.

CONTOUR LINES STAGE:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl3.jpg

[Bruce Lee]

I continue to outline the figure until I it is complete. I do this for the purpose of setting boundaries prior to getting into adding shadows that will be smoothed and smudged later on. Some artists would do the shadowing first, and then would add in the contours. Some would leave out the contour lines altogether, seeking a more photorealistic approach to a finished drawing. It's a matter of personal preference, and deciding what your overall goal is. In this case, the outlining of the figure serves to offer me a guideline to follow, which I like.

CONTOUR LINE STAGE CONTINUED:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl4.jpg

I usually take the contouring of the figure to a finish. Some of the outlining might be lost during the next stage, and might require some punching up here and there.


5) ADDING LIGHT AND SHADOW. In the next stage of the drawing, I will determine a light source, adding in some shadows to define the form. I'm also going to further develop the background elements. I've determined that my light source will be coming from a cavern entrance "off-camera" slightly in front of, and just off to the right of Batgirl. I will concern myself with spotting shadows on her body in areas that are in opposition to the light source, and I will try to keep in mind cast shadows as well. I will have a minor secondary reflective light source just overhead that won't come into play much, but this reflective light will factor on her cowl just a little.

Good lighting is important because shadows can be used to define the human form, to add depth and dimension in your drawing, and can evoke mood and atmosphere. I want all of these things in my drawing.

I want to approach the shadowing in a soft manner. Solid, spotted black shadows are very dramatic, but can often be very harsh looking on a female figure. I find a graytone approach better for maintaining a feminine grace and beauty, so I will make sure that when all is said and done, the shadows are handled in a soft and smooth manner, with graduation of light and shadow being my objective in the end. At this stage though, I'll be using a soft graphic to block in the areas of shadow on Batgirl's body. I'm not concerned with smoothing anything just yet. I'm just trying to figure out where the shadows will be, and how the shapes might look on the figure.

I'm also not going to draw in Batgirl's pupils just yet. In fact, that'll be the last thing I do. This is to ensure that her eyes--the finest details of the drawing--won't be accidentally smudged or compromised during the working stages of the drawing. So for now, she'll have to be "zombie Batgirl" until we get to the end. Don't worry. She'll have pupils when the graphite dust clears.

SHADOW MAPPING STAGE:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl5.jpg

6. SMOOTH OPERATOR. After the shapes are blocked-in, I am free to concentrate on smoothing out the shadows. Remember those old Hollywood films from the '30s and '40s? If you aren't, check some of them out on Turner Classic Movies. You'll notice in those old films that the starlets in those movies are always well-lighted with a very soft focus lighting. This sort of lighting was used to enhance the beauty of the actress. While Noir-ish stark black and white shadows were dramatically great, studios avoiding lighting female leads in such a way most of the time, finding that solid black lighting often obscured the beauty of the actresses, or made their faces seem older or a bit more harsh. When you're trying to sell the public on the beauty of your actress, you want to play up her strengths. This is a lesson I try to take to my own artwork when I'm drawing female characters. Femininity should be about softness, gracefulness, and elegance in my mind, and I feel it's important to make a distinction between men and women when I'm drawing. I don't want anyone having to guess at the sex of one of my characters, unless such ambiguity is specifically called for. So, to ensure that Batgirl is all woman, this is the phase of the drawing that I begin to tone down the pencil shadows. I use either a paper towel or a smudging stump to do such effects. In this case, I used that latter, buffing out the pencil line until I achieve the desired smoothness I want. I will go back in a few times and add more pencils to darken in certain areas to ensure that I have a good graduation of dark to light in the shadowing. I will smooth things along the way, add more pencils, smooth. Rinse. Repeat. Slowly, the shadows will build up to the desired values of light to dark that I want to see.

SMOOTHING AND SOFTENING STAGE:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl6.jpg

Which brings me to...

[Bruce Lee]

7. ...THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. In this last stage, I remove unwanted pencil lines and clean up the drawing using an electric eraser and a kneaded eraser. I do any last minute punch-ups to the contour lines, and finally I add in Batgirl's pupils. Once I'm satisfied that the values are good, the anatomy is right, the contours are fine, etc, all that is left for me to do is to sign my name on the drawing and call it a day. :)

FINAL DRAWING:
http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl7.jpg


Thanks to Korintic, here's an animated gif of the image, step-by-step:

http://www.lostonwallace.com/batgirl1.gif

Loston

[Bruce Lee]

I deleted the posts on this step-by-step because I felt this thread needed a fresh start. This thread was sidetracked by a discussion about negative rep points before, and that isn't what this step-by-step thread is about. If you want to repost your comments, crits, etc, I welcome them, but please stay on topic here, if you would. I made special efforts to post this step-by-step at the request of other PJ members in hopes it might somehow benefit others. It would be great to know that my efforts and time were not in vain. Just keep it civil and ontopic, folks. It's all I ask.

Loston

[Repo Man]

Very cool Loston. Thanks. I always learn something from your tutorials. For me, the breakdown stage is key (something I'm trying to improve in my own process) and I like how you used ovals to denote the top points of her hips/obliques. I'll have to try that.

It's also interesting how you wait until the final stage to put in the pupils. For me, I have to do them first because I need a full expression from the character to get a feel for the pose.

Very interesting and thanks again.

[WolfSpiritZero]

Very insightful tutorial Loston. I agree with the idea of the eyes last. For years I used to draw the eyes first. But if you do it to early multiple things could go wrong and you end up with a cock-eyed character. Or like you stated smudges.

[Ugga Bugga]

great job on this. It's helpful

[Mase]

Great step-by-step Loston - thanks.

[NickRocks]

very cool! I thought you were gonna take this all the way to inks, but this is fine!

its interesting that you do it that way

[Bruce Lee]

very cool! I thought you were gonna take this all the way to inks, but this is fine!

its interesting that you do it that way

I actually work differently when I'm doing comic work, because you don't need to do all the tonal shading. This was one of the free character sketches I did for someone who bought a copy of my sketchbook, RETROBURNER, and I did some tonal stuff on some of those.

Loston

[tekno]

great wow! very helpful

[Bruce Lee]

I'm glad it is helpful, tekno.

[LymanFunk]

This is very cool. Thanks! (and thanks dfbovey for leading me to it!)

[HunterGreen]

That's truly mindboggling, how you start with squiggles and
end up with that beautiful woman.

thank you for taking the time to do this
tutorial, again, it is absolutely amazing.

-HG

[Bruce Lee]

That's truly mindboggling, how you start with squiggles and
end up with that beautiful woman.

My question is, how you
you keep the paper from being destroyed by erasing all the
original lines? Do you just draw lightly, do you work with
large paper (> 8.5x11), Do you use the non-photoblue
first?

This particular Batgirl piece was drawn on a 4" X 6" piece of 2-ply Strathmore Bristol board, which is fairly sturdy stuff. I used to do non-repo blue before hand, but I honestly don't like that too much. Some blue pencils are waxy and/or are prone to smudging, and you can never keep those bad boys sharpened, so you're constantly sharpening them down. I went thru them very quickly. To me, they weren't worth it, so I stick to using regular graphite pencils for underdrawing. Flops my boat.

I initially pencilled the gesture on a piece of scrap copy paper to get down the layout I wanted. Then I reworked things on the bristol board, pencilling lightly so I could erase what later. As I built up to the final pencils. I removed the lighter lines of the underdrawing by using a combination of mars plastic eraser, and a kneaded eraser primarily, with some electric eraser batting clean-up. The kneaded eraser is best used to get rid of smears, smudges and thinner lines. Kneaded erasers are also great because you can sculpt them into a point, pull them apart to just use a small section of them, etc. The mars eraser is best for cleaning up large areas of pencil, and an electric eraser is good for getting into and erasing tight areas without destroying a lot of the lines in the same area that you want to keep. You could use an eraser shield though, if you don't have an electric eraser.


Thanks for any input and thank you for taking the time to do this
tutorial, again, it is absolutely amazing.

-HG[/QUOTE]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, HG. I hope to do a few more of these in the future, including a sequential page step-by-step. :)

Loston

[thee_dug]

Bravo! Excellent tutorial with a great emphasis on the female form.

[Bruce Lee]

Bravo! Excellent tutorial with a great emphasis on the female form.

Thanks, thee_dug! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

[thee_dug]

Thanks, thee_dug! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

I hope to enjoy more threads like this in the future. Thank you for taking your time to share it with us all.

[Bruce Lee]

I hope to enjoy more threads like this in the future. Thank you for taking your time to share it with us all.

I'll see what I can do. I have some step by steps I've been meaning to post.