“Ralph.” Creature Bust. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
Say hello to Ralph, my latest creature concept. Ralph was created while I was doing a “speed sculpt” on ZBrush over the weekend. I posted a video of the sculpt in my previous post (view video).
The first thing you are probably asking yourself is: “Wait a minute? The Amish have opinions about drawing hands?” I honestly have no idea if the Amish ever said anything about drawing hands, and if they did, they wouldn’t blog about it. I got this headline from a Blog Content Generator and it made me laugh… so I decided to use it as a topic headline. Another truth I must share with you is that many times when I draw hands, the results sometimes make me laugh (but mostly it makes me cry).
Drawing hands can be very difficult. Especially for me. When I was younger, I thought I was pretty good at drawing hands. The fact is, I practiced it, and practiced it, and found I could do it pretty well. As the years passed, I fell out of practice of hand drawing, and as a result I find the effort of drawing hands to be just that – an effort.
Before I continue with writing this post, I must admit (just to avoid any confusion) that I am not listing 17 things the Amish were right about drawing hands. I will, however, press the importance of why hands are important in an illustration. Cartoonist Christopher Hart wrote in one of his best-selling how-to books: How to Draw Comic Book Heroes and Villains, “I can evaluate the caliber of an artist by his or her ability to draw hands – and so can everyone else.” By the way, if you are an aspiring artist, I highly recommend adding this book to your library.
In my early offerings of my on-line comic strip Hospitality Included, I discovered the importance of drawing hands (even cartoony hands). I lost a potential reader due to my lack of attention to the characters’ hands. This reader wrote a comment under one of my offerings how my hands were so amateurish that he would never log in and read another one of my Hospitality Included strips. I needed to delete that comment due to the fact that this comment was so explicitly written (language-wise), that it could not remain on a family-friendly comic strip.
Needless to say, I learned early how hands can make, or break, an illustration. As I wrote previously, I still have issues with drawing hands. Fortunately, I recently discovered a great resource (aside from the book I listed above) on how to draw hands. Another positive thing about this resource is that it is FREE. Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw Cartoon Hands written expertly and concisely by ,it is a wonderful tutorial about drawing hands. And although the tutorial is about correctly drawing cartoon hands, I find the techniques could be useful for many types of illustrated hands.
I know… this is a long-winded post about sharing a couple of links, but I wanted to demonstrate how important it is that hands are correctly drawn. And one of these days I will actually accomplish this feat again. To help me with this, I have bookmarked this resource, and I recommend any other artist who finds themselves having troubles with drawing hands to do the same thing:
Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw Cartoon Hands
If you have any other resources that could help me, and others, please share them in comments section of this post.
By the way, I drew the illustration at the top of this post. If you are a blogger and would like a custom illustration for your next post, or… if you just want an illustration for your avatar or website… contact me. I’m always Looking To Draw.
“Jake.” Character Concep;t. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes (click image to view larger rendering)
I had originally created this character in my early attempts at using ZBrush. Though I was really pleased with my first concept, I learned so much more since then. With that said, I really wanted this “Jake” character to look more “real.” I think I finally managed to reach this goal. Please let me know what you think.
Technically this is still a WIP (work-in-progress). I am still detailing the coat, pants and other accessories. I will post the completed sculpt at a later date.
“Frank.” Character Concept. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
Meet Frank. My newest character concept. The idea behind Frank was to create a half human, half alien rogue. I had in mind from the beginning in this concept to create a dark-skinned character with blond hair and orange eyes, giving him a more alien appearance. However I wanted any other alien features to be softened (skull bones and ridges less pronounced) with the hope he would be a handsome “Face-like” (from the A-Team) character. I hope I achieved this goal.
As always, I created this character using ZBrush, and final production was completed in Photoshop. Feedback would be appreciated.
“Gaur — Character Sheet.” (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes,
Here is my latest illustration. I decided to create this as a one-color line drawing because I wanted to make sure I could still do it. Line illustration is my first love. I first realized that I could draw when I was very young — many years ago — when I discovered that I could draw “Tippy the Turtle.” Like most of you, I grew up reading comic books (unfortunately I didn’t have enough foresight to hang on to them… they’d be worth a fortune today), and knew I wanted to draw for a living.
So, here is my latest submission. I hope you like it.
“Seeing Red.” Digital Line Art Illustration. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
I am currently working up a series of email ads for a prospective client and this is the first of a set of line art illustrations that I am proposing to appear in the ads.
I have called this illustration Seeing Red. The concept of the ad is to buy the client’s product to help you ” Stop Seeing Red.”
I haven’t done a lot of line art work recently, so it was good to get back to my illustrative roots.