Development - Jean Grey Step by Step (Patreon)

Because I was talking about some of the art style and efforts to improve, lately, I thought it would be cool to show a step by step of a pin up. The comic process is a little different, but I'll point out when it happens.

Reference

With the pin ups I have been using more and more references lately. I'll occationally use reference in the comics if it is an odd pose, or I'm going for something specific. But with a lot of conversation scenes, references are not normally needed.

I'm very much pro reference use. I think there are professional artists who use it too much to a detriment (Greg Land). But also amazing artists who use references frequently and exceptionally like Alex Ross. It's not a limitation or a crutch. I think with out reference materials, an artist can get real into the weeds and lose more and more connections to how people function, and limit their creativity.

Skeleton

A basic outline or skeleton of where the head and body parts are. Establishing the frame I am going to build on.

Body Sketch

Now it's time for the body. You are going to be able to see adjustments. I normally have to scale up the head at this point. Just a cartooning thing. If you sketch, especially one of Steph where her head is too small. I was likely using reference and messed up this step.

This is also where you will see me leaning into more of the curves and making choices about the character and doing details on the face.

Clothing

This isn't always a different step or layer. With the comic characters, they are pretty much in the same outfit for pages at a time. So I'm used to what they are wearing, and I'm doing their outfit at the same time as their body.

But for a pin up, or the first time a character shows up in an outfit, I make these different steps.

Inks

This is where I am going in and making the final lines that you are going to see in the finished sketch. You can see there are choices I'm making here to make the figure work a little better. You can see about like where her back knee lands is adjusted. As well as some details.

Colors - Flats

For the comic, I tend to stop after doing what are called flats. Basically the colors with no highlights or shadows. Basically going furthing than this for many pages takes far too much time, and I'd never be able to finish a page in a reasonable time.

But ultimately this is a different layer below the links, so I can spread the colors the best I can and not spill color outside of the lines.

This is how I work. Everyone is a little, or a lot, different.

Do you have any questions?