This week I’m going to blow through a bunch of posts about various tools of the trade for my style of comics. My style is very simple, so if you’re looking for complicated brush techniques or tedious india ink debates, I’m sure there are plenty of tedious message boards elsewhere. Today I’m starting with place sets.
After posting some city sketches, I got a few email questions about what I meant by making “sets” for comics. It’s pretty straightforward, it just means making drawings of repeated images (your apartment, kitchen, etc…) from different angles for reference. Example: if you sit at your desk often in your comics, draw that part of your house from different vantages so you know the space and can draw in the same almost every time in different positions. That way you can figure out where to place your character, how far to zoom in/out and how to avoid ill placed lines and blocks of color.
haha you guuuuuys that is not what I use them for at all. That’s what is suggested as a cartooning technique, but I just draw them because I fucking love my apartment and I like wasting time looking at it and then drawing it from every angle like an illustrative circle-jerk. Plus half the time I think I would use a set in a drawing, I end up tossing it because it can be unnecessarily complicated. Here are my sets for the main room in my apartment.
I’m going to answer questions about this and other art stuff at the end of the week, so if you’ve got a question, please post it in the comment section
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
What? No cats?
Nicely done! No way could I do as well! Keep up the good work!
i love your apartment drawings!
What I especially like is your studio. (by that I mean the almost empty desk at the window). I am interested in the tools of the trade, but don’t like high tech fancy stuff. My current “studio” is a 12″x15″ board, one side I use for drawing, the other for cutting. I just put a pillow in my lap, board on it and I can pretty much draw for 2-3 hours if time allows.
A question: You also post city sets. How do you draw them? I mean do you stay there and draw or only by memory at home, or do you take a photo for ref.?
almost forgot: I love the idea of you sharing your methods with us, looking fw to it
thx
I love it! I always like hearing about other artists methods.
I am wondering if you draw out all the perspective lines, horizon lines, etc.