Comic Tip #1: Practice Facial Expressions

No comic for tonight's post, but I got something better for you: Comic Tip #1. A lot of people have asked me how to get started at making comics, and this is just my amateur way to help them out.

I've always liked to make funny comics. Most of my drawings are unprofessional and very stiff. Lately, I've tried to draw every day, and that has helped me add fluidity in my drawings.

So the other day while checking one of my friend @evacprocedure posts (yes I'm claiming the title of friendship without consulting hehe), she recommended that a good way to do better characters is to draw them multiple times, that will help get you consistency in your drawings. Usually my comics are about my cartoon self in different situations. Even after doing so many comics of me, I still feel like it's very difficult to get that consistent look on me. That's why I decided to practice drawing myself a few times.

But trying to kill two set tasks at the same time, I wanted to practice some facial expressions. Facial expressions are super important in cartoons and comics. Adding a text to your comic to communicate an idea is not that complicated. However, lining up that text with the corresponding facial expression, makes the comic more realistic. That's why is also very important to practice facial expressions and body movement in your comics (but that would be for another day).

Here're the expressions I practiced

Those are the final drawings, I usually like to start sketching in blue pen to play around with the face before actually inking it. Here's the sketched drawing

I think the expressions are OK, but then again, it seems like I still need to work on getting consistency at drawing my face. Some of the drawings have the shape of the head very round, others more oval shaped, then others I have the hair longer.... I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm still not happy and more practice is needed. But since I like doing comics then is not a tedious thing to do :D!

Anyway, I hope this tip helps all the people who are starting to draw comics and don't know where to start. I might be sharing more posts about things that I learn on my way to make better comics :)

Remember, I'm running a Discord server and also a Facebook group with @jonathan-greer, in case you want to join and we can talk about webcomics and even collaborate to make ones.

If you also like to make webcomics or comic strips, you can use the tag #steemit-webcomics

Until next time!