- 1). Draw practice pages from Marvel comic books. Many art schools ask that their students make copies of famous works of art so that they can learn some of the techniques that the old masters used. Use this same principle to understand how to draw Marvel people. Draw out a couple of pages from your favorite Marvel comics. Pay attention to how the artist drew them in context of the comic panel and in context of the environment of the story. Use the grid drawing technique if you feel like you can't quite get the proportions down right, including the concept of foreshortening.
- 2). Make stick figure studies of each character in different poses. Stan Lee and John Buscema suggest that you begin with stick figures. The advantage of starting with stick figures is that you'll learn how to draw the movements of your characters without worrying about drawing the details of their bodies. This teaches you how to capture their physical structure.
- 3). Flesh out the Marvel person's body with a series of scribbles so that the skeleton becomes a three-dimensional Marvel person. For example, if you're drawing Spider-Man and working on drawing his upper body, draw a stick figure and then scribble in the rib cage area until it takes shape. If you draw a line that doesn't quite look correct, draw one over it, making the correction. Keep doing this until the body takes shape. Erase the extra lines once you're done. Draw Marvel people in a variety of poses in your sketchbooks making loose sketches. This technique is also called gesture drawing.
- 4). Draw them larger. Marvel heroes and villains are actually quite a bit larger than the average person in the Marvel world. These characters usually stand at least a head and half taller than most humans. They also possess wider hips and shoulders. Even the female superhero characters stand taller than their non-hero counterparts. Make practice drawings of Marvel heroes next to the everyday Joe so that you can see the difference and learn to draw it.
- 5). Make their movements larger than life. Drawing comics relies quite a bit on the elements of exaggeration and foreshortening. For example, if a normal person bends about 45 degrees to throw a punch, the Marvel character will bend further. His fist will look larger and take up almost the whole comic frame in which it's drawn. The example of him bending demonstrates exaggeration whereas his giant fist coming out of frame represents foreshortening.
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