ICECUBES the comic strip. – Cool Color Comics!

ICECUBES the comic strip #369 — ICECUBES the comic strip -369

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It’s all in the gesture! That’s where you get the energy and ‘funny’ into your drawings. So I always spend time practicing each drawing on a sketch pad by drawing big circles and blobs for the heads and bodies of my characters. This helps me ‘anchor’ them into place and make them feel real. Be sure to always get a good under-drawing happening before committing to the final. No amount of style can make up for a poorly balanced drawing.
ICECUBES
So get crazy and start making ‘gestural drawings’! 🙂

Cool Pix!

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Leroy Brown

Always been an inspiration! 🙂 I used to collect ICEE points when I was a kid to get prizes!

Backdrawing.

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Leroy Brown

When drawing on the outer edge of your panel, it’s important to extend the drawing as if you were drawing the whole character. Even if parts will get cut off it is a good idea to draw them to get a feeling for where things are supposed to fall. For example in this drawing, Peckinpaw is off to the side and his shoulder is mostly cut off even though I drew the shoulder. Without the shoulder I wouldn’t know where to put his arms and hands. Also note that his left arm is drawn even though I won’t see it because of the book in front of it. That way I know exactly where to put his fingers. I call this ‘backdrawing’ or drawing in the round. 🙂

Drawing tools.

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Leroy Brown

Here is a picture of my collection of metal drawing nibs. I have gathered these throughout the years and although I only use a very specific type for drawing and lettering, I like keeping them. The ones I use on the strip are in the little plastic box in the foreground. The techniques I use to draw are very old fashioned to some. Although I do use a tablet for doing commercial work, the plastic ‘sliding’ feeling of drawing on a tablet won’t work for the strip. I like the feel of drawing on paper and inking with nibs.

Comixtalk cover.

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Leroy Brown

This is the new cover I did for ComixTalk.com. Go check out the site, lots of great stuff about webcomics. Big thanks to Xaviar Xerexes.

Comic strip blocking.

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Leroy Brown

‘Blocking’ just means blocking out how the action gets laid out on the page. In this case I was trying to work out the way Peckinpaw tripped and fell by making the gesture and movement read well in the limited amount of space of the 13″ x 4″ strip. Some artists call this the storyboarding stage. It’s real important to do this before you start drawing the real strip or else you will be erasing and restarting a lot. I always try to avoid a lot of erasing because it can introduce smudges that are hard to get rid of. It can also mess up the surface of the paper making it harder to ink. You can see click on the final published strip here.