Drewscape's Blog

 

Learn to tell stories through comics with these 4 foundation classes! Participants will learn how to draw characters and backgrounds in simple and effective ways. Then learn the basics of telling clear stories using sequential pictures, from drawing out a conversation scene to high action sequences. Through these workshops, participants will gain confidence in telling their own stories through comics.

This class is designed for young ones from 8yrs - 15yrs old. And we aim to keep it fun and engaging. The classes are designed as a series but each can also be taken on their own. Sign up for all of them to learn even more!

No drawing experience needed. All materials will be provided. (Participants are also welcomed to bring their own preferred drawing tools to the workshop if they like). Seating is limited.

In these workshops you will be taught by two instructors- fellow illustrator and comic artist Ann Gee and I. We’ve been drawing comics for years. (Since I was a kid, for me.) We draw comics both for work as well as for fun. And we’ve looking forward to sharing what we know with you!:)

Scan the QR code in this poster or sign up with this LINK !

 

I'm presently busy working on a few projects due before I go on vacation. (Oh yes, and post a few things on YouTube and Patreon too!) But I had to do draw out this comic today. When recording daily life comics, sometimes, they can be time sensitive. It would not be the same doing this comic tomorrow or next week because things will change, my thoughts about the events before these events will be different after, so I quickly drew this out. It does help to not care so much so I can draw quicker. And a tight time limitation does help me get into that "not care so much" attitude as well!
I drew this quickly before I started work this morning, using a G-nib dipped in indian ink. OK that slows things a little but I do like to have some fun doing it too. Dip pens make it more fun for me because they are more unpredictable. I also tried something different. I used a photo in my 5th panel. This comic is a quick ramble, but it was something I wanted to capture. I find it amusing that Ollie is so excited about NF's new album release on the 14th of November on Spotify. She has been waiting so long for this new album. To her, it's overdue. There is countdown timer on the NF Spotify page and she found that she will still be in school at the time of the album release. So she wants me to film the screen when it comes down to 0. She is calling tomorrow NF Day. OK I'm looking forward to it too!

 

I enjoy the fact that art and comics can be used in many circumstances. I was dealing with a cough and phlegm, a fever and sounded like I was losing my voice. Though my body didn't feel like it, I still got it to do a comic and that felt good to my soul! I drew this while sitting at my bed and then went back to sleep. I missed a woodblock class that evening, and I also had to cancel a comic workshop I was to attend at 8am at a school the next morning. I feel fine now and did a quick coloring of this comic before I go for a work meeting!
One thought. If I'd captured this comic only after I recovered, I don't think my lines would look like this. I like that I captured my wooziness in my lines as well.
Fountain pen + Photoshop.

There are many reasons why I could do a comic. I could be doing it for work, to get published, for YouTube or Patreon, to have something to show on this blog.  Thinking in that direction can increase the pressure in my mind. I often have to ask myself “why am I doing this”. My best answer is often “because I just need to, for myself.” These comics help me take time to organise my thoughts and all that is happening to me. And also as a means of creative expression, without needing to please any one else. And often (not always) when I do comics, thinking like that, I find I have something worth putting here on my blog. Why do you draw comics?
Comic was drawn with an xxf watermans vintage flex pen in my sketchbook and coloured in Procreate on another day. The nice thing about not having a car is that I can now do stuff while commuting. I colored this page in the train. 

Here's a new class by me on Skillshare. I've been working on this these couple months and it continues my earlier comics classes on Skillshare. You might have seen this video on comics principles on Youtube. This Skillshare series I've been building expands and elaborates on the points in that video. This new course covers the small things I observe when I do conversation scenes. Conversation scenes are something that happens in most stories so I believe it will be useful. This one is for beginners and covers only a simple conversation scene (before I cover more dramatic scenes in another class later on).

If you're interested, use this Skillshare link to get 1 month free Skillshare (only for those new to Skillshare) and you can take the class as well as all the other classes by various experts on Skillshare:)

I has a nice chat with Mike from NOT BUYING IT about, well, buying things. Particularly art tools. I was one of the interviewees he brought on in this video. It's a long one video but I'm amused at how he talks about buying things. I also like the way he designs his graphics for his videos. Check out the mini-animations in the background, while he talks. Oh, the video during my zoom call got mangled, so you won't see my face. But you will hear my voice super-imposed over some clips he managed to put together from my videos.

Building a Youtube channel, finishing a longer comic, well, even finishing one page of comic can feel like a lot of work if I think of it as a whole. I'd think - It will take too much time. Too much work. It's too hard. I shall do it when I have more time and energy. And then I put it off and I don't start. Time passes. 

I've been working on getting more creative work done by tweaking my mind. When it comes to producing Youtube videos, I don't think of the next 5-10 videos ahead. I only think of the next one. If I think "It's too hard", I tell myself that "I only have to make it at least 3 minutes. Only 3 minutes long! I can do that!" Of that's too hard, I tell myself to just go to a cafe and write down the idea for the video. I only think about, and do that one small thing for the day. Then, on another day, I do the next part, one small thing at a time. And then eventually, I look back and I've done a whole video. And then only after that I work on the next one.

And oh yes, I combine that with one other thought - Seeing it as part of my business, rather than a hobby. When it comes to work, I meet my deadlines. If it's a hobby, I put it off until I'm free. 

So the two thoughts are "focus on one small thing at time" + "see it as work, not a hobby."

So that's how I've been approaching the Youtube videos so far. I started to do them more regularly since July 2023 and gosh there are so many now. So I've been trying this and this has been working for me. I've not applied this to drawing comics pages and perhaps that's why I'm still rather sporadic about that! Do you have something similar or an alternative thought that helps you get around to building bigger things? Please share:)

Anyways, here are 3 Youtube videos on illustration and art that I've done recently. Hope this helps and thanks for watching!









 

So I've been taking pictures with a camera more often than usual nowadays. And I got a little worried that I might be having more fun with photography than drawing and painting. I've noticed that when I'm interested in learning something new, I tend to really get rather obsessed with it. That's what happened with fountain pens and urban sketching. So it started me looking for ways to connect photography with drawing and painting. Already, I feel that photography helps sharpen my colour sense and composition. And that can help me improve my drawing and painting.
But I wanted to see if I could use it in my process of creating art. A month ago, after taking another big bunch of photos, I decided I'd use some of them as photo references. That's what artists do. (I don't do that often because I was so into real-life observational drawings). So I chose 3 and decided that I'd only use them loosely as reference, and not try to make a copy. I'd also bought 4 new sticks of oil pastels (Van Gogh brand). They were not pricey and I wanted to compare them to the Sennellier oil pastels, an excuse for buying more art materials! So I basically used that, and maybe a bit of pencil.

In Sept, as I was looking up prominent photographers to learn from, I came across youtube videos about photographer, Saul Leiter, and his pictures appealed to me. Have you heard of him? I'm new to photography, so I've only just discovered him. I also borrowed a library book on him and watched his documentary. I like that slightly abstract yet, kinda poetic, blurry, emotional look his photos have. And he seemed to like shooting into reflections. So in some of the photos I shot, I was trying that out. And I tried to create art with that similar look and feel. Rubbing oil pastels with my fingers produced very blurry edges so I used the edges of paper to create hard edges when I wanted to. This is one experiment that I've tried and liked. Let me know what you think.

I don't claim to have found some amazing new way to draw. I'm just experimenting and learning as I go along. This was fun. I wonder what I'll discover next!

Below are the pictures I based the above drawing on:

This post comes late! I've been putting work into the Patreon page, did a Youtube video this month and also working on another Skillshare course that should be out before end of this year. Amidst all that, I've been wanted to finish this project since the beginning of the year - putting together the 2021 sketch books into one eBook. 

This took way longer than I imagined. Scanning felt like a really tedious process. I was scanning these pages in high resolution and I also had to deal with the book gutters by either removing the staples that hold the books together or pressing them against the scanner in some way so the pages stay flat. After several months of doing this, off and on, I decided I had to finish it this week. I put it all in a layout, adjusted and re-adjusted, found pages I forgot to scan, got them scanned, checked, tweaked, and finally got it done! Phew! I do like how it turned out.

I know that my last batch of e-Sketch books captured my drawings from over a decade ago. That's a long time ago. Now, these Sketch Books collect my recent drawings from about 4 years ago. Have I improved over time? Has my art changed? You can be the judge of that.

Why did I choose 2021? When I looked through this series, I felt it had a nice variation of styles and mediums. There was comics, comic diaries and observational drawings and also random imaginative drawings. These pages inspire me to draw more, when I look at them, even without them looking polished and perfect. I actually like them because of the imperfections. I did a sketchbook tour of these sketch books on Youtube. I will get to the sketch books from other years, perhaps another time:)

There are 6 sketch books in this collection and from cover to cover, this eBook is 166 pages in total! It is available for purchase HERE. You will receive an instant PDF download which you can view in either single or double page formats.

 

When I don't have time to do a polished comic or if I'm just too tired, I often do a comic spontaneously. That means, without carefully planning, thumbnails, scripting and rough pencilling. Straight from my head to ink on paper. You'll find me doing this approach in The Ollie Comics when I had little time to do comics (You'll understand if you've had a kid.) The result is sometimes surprising and oftentimes fresher. The lines are more alive. It's like speaking from the heart, unrehearsed. Doing it the careful polished way has it's own merits. But this spontaneous way is what I fall back on when the choice comes down to do it quickly now, or there is no time to do it.
If you'd like to see how I did this comic from scratch to finish, I've done a video and post on this comic in my "secret" Patreon page . Yes, I'm finally announcing it here. I was keeping it low-key because I wasn't sure if I could commit posting a post every month, on top of create videos for youtube, a blog, work and kids. And also keeping art enjoyable for myself on top of it all! I don't want to burn out. So far, I've been able to slowly build it up month by month and have at least one post a month.

This Patreon page focuses mainly on comics and stories. In it, I'm posting work that requires more time and effort to produce, unpublished comics, together with videos that cover tips and techniques about comics and art in more detail. Most of the posts will be available to members only. If you'd like to join for month or so and then un-join, that's totally OK too. I often do that when I join an artist's Patreon page! My main hope and aim is that you learn lots and find the page worth visiting:)