Drawing the Webbing of Spider-Man's Costume Tutorial

[Bruce Lee]

Nice addition to the tutorial!

Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Loston

[The_Standard]

Sweet facial advice, Romita would be proud.

[Bruce Lee]

Sweet facial advice, Romita would be proud.

I don't know about that, but I'm glad you like it, man.

Loston

[bdog]

Great tutorial helped alot

[spidey976]

Sweet facial advice, Romita would be proud.

I think he probably would be seeing as you are helping guys like us ... this is an awesome thread Loston. Thanks for all of your help.

[Bruce Lee]

No problem, guys. I'm happy to help shine the light on things like this. I want to do a tutorial on Thing's rocky skin at some point. Seems to me a lot of artists struggle with the Thing sometimes.

Loston

[Geekboy]

Nice tutorial and I've always loved the clean lines of a John Romita Sr. Spider-Man over the over-rendering of, say, a Todd McFarlane one. Sure, Ditko had more webs on his Spider-Man, but that was Ditko. None of us ever have been or ever shall be Ditko. He could get away with it. We can not.

[Cuddly]

It's been said before but it bears repeating - this is a great thread!

My pet peeve (and you and I have discussed this before Loston) is people not getting the classic Spidey mask right. The key thing is to look closely at the mask Loston drew and notice that one line goes from the middle of the top of the head down to in-between the eyes. That line then becomes two lines that go from in between the eyes down to the jaw line. It doesn't work any other way. For example, there is no center line from between the eyes down to the jaw line. It just doesn't look right when drawn that way. Conversely, two lines up without the line in the middle looks off also.

Also, the scalloping of the webs on his limbs needs to change depending on the perspective Spidey is drawn in. IIRC, it should always be drawn in the opposite direction from the natural curvature of the muscles. This is to avoid the webbing reinforcing the muscles' curvature and making the figure in perspective look "lumpy". I hope I remembered that right.

Incidentally, is the under-armpit webbing still considered part of the costume anymore? I prefer it, but is it considered "on model" these days?

Also, I second NickGuy's comment about the webbing on the hands (especially the palms) and fingers being a pain. Is there a proper way to draw that?

[SumOne]

hey loston i jus did a spidey n w.i.p n i wanted to know if you could give me pointers on the fingers..how to do the webbing that is if your not to piled up with work

[Bruce Lee]

hey loston i jus did a spidey n w.i.p n i wanted to know if you could give me pointers on the fingers..how to do the webbing that is if your not to piled up with work

I can do that. SumOne, first off you should know that no two artists draw Spidey's costume exactly the same way--Steve Ditko drew it differently than John Romita, Gil Kane drew it different than that, etc--so there's no exact definitive costume design. But most everyone who has ever drawn the Spider-Man costume for print has tried to keep within certain reasonable perimeters. That said, most artists interpret the webbing on Spidey's gloves to be something like this:



The amount of rings around the fingers or curving webbing inside the palm area of the glove often varies, but the above is more or less the basic look of Spider-Man's hand wear.

I hope this helps.

Loston