Character Process, second attempt

I know I just did one on these posts, but it bothered me that it ended with "and I crumpled the drawing up and threw it out".  It just seems like poor form to describe a process that ended with a garbage result.  I doubt anyone suspects me of lying about how I make the drawings, it just bugs me that I ended up with a failed result.  This is probably my coder mentality coming through.  With anything on the computer if you follow the instructions correctly then you ought to get the same result every time.  So if your process is good it shouldn't generate garbage.  This is not true with drawing, but I've been drawing for far less time than I've been coding so I don't have the best habits.
Once again I'm drawing the character Lawrence Danforth pulp explorer.  A similar pose as well, though I'm having him holding the rifle instead of having it slung over a shoulder.  I tried a few attempts at drawing a hand holding the strap and just couldn't make it work.  Rather than get stuck on it again I'm just changing the pose.

In the Loomis book I mentioned last time he sets the scale for the body based on the size of the head.  A person is eight heads tall,  the arm from wrist to shoulder is three heads long, that sort of thing.  With this in mind I start by drawing the head.  I start with a ball and mark the vertical and horizontal mid-lines.  The vertical mid-line will bisect the face, and the vertical on will be where the eye brows go.  This, by the way, is another technique from Mr. Loomis, you can read about it in another of his books.

Clearly I like Lommis' approach to things, it's fairly methodical yet very adaptable.  I'm not sure when these books were written, but Mr. Loomis died in 1959 so it's a fair bet they've fallen into the public domain by now.  Obviously I don't know the legalities of it, but you can get the books for free here.

From the ball I rough in the shape of the head as well as the major features.  Run this over with the kneaded eraser then create clean lines fairly darkly.  It's still missing some details, but enough is there that it works for setting the scale.

Now comes the gesture sketch to define the character's posture, and then that crude geometric torso.  In this picture I'm quickly reminded of why doing the gesture sketch first is preferred.  If you just drop the head wherever its convenient on the page then you run the risk of having your drawing stretch off the page, which I've done here.  Oh well I just won't be drawing feet I guess.

Too late now, with the gesture sketch in place I block in the shape of his body with some light lines to define exactly where his skin would be.  Not a lot of detail, just some rough shapes to show where his muscle might create lumps and bulges.

This is quickly followed by drawing some rough lines for his clothes.  Just the broad details, enough so I can see how the character is shaping up.  At this point I start making adjustments to the picture.  I hadn't left enough space for his pelvis so I lower his legs a bit.  His arms had different thicknesses so I try to balance them out a bit.  These lines I tend to work on for a while, keeping everything very faint so that if I need to erase a section it doesn't leave much of a trace.

Once I'm done tweaking the image it gets the kneaded eraser again, then I redo clothes with dark lines.  This tends to get me in trouble later, but I haven't settled on a good way of doing this.  I don't like to let too many layers of lines to build up with all the guides and rough cuts I make.  At the same time when you add a dark line it can become trouble later if some object not yet drawn obscures it.  Let's say that he'll have a machete in his left hand, then the blade will cover up part of his belt and force me to erase that.  Odds are good that the line won't erase cleanly.

Next I add some details to the picture.  A few wrinkle lines in the shirt and pants, pockets in the shirt, details in the face and head, things like that.  Once again I'm running the risk of needing to erase stuff if it gets covered.  In this case I was careful to keep them away from where the rest of the drawing will go.  It might be a better idea to hold off on this until you've at least blocked in the rest of the drawing.

So let's get to that, block in the hands and the stuff he's holding.  It always takes me a few tries to get the hands right, I just have a lot of trouble getting them to look right.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out here; not perfect, but I'm pleased with the effort.

Finish up the tweaks and then once again kneaded eraser and go over it with dark lines.  It turns out I was right, the machete in the left hand does cover up part of the belt and the lines I put there didn't erase without a trace.  I'd be more annoyed with that except that I had intended to color this guy, the erasing is good enough that the colored pencil should hide what remains.

The image isn't perfect, I can spot a number of places where there are definite problems with it.  Overall though, I'm happy with it.  The line art I have here is fairly clean and is a pretty good representation of how I image the guy.  It does need some shading or color though.  I'm still enthusiastic enough about the drawing to pull out my colored pencils and keep working.

Before I get any pigment on the paper it dawns on me that I've never make skin colors before.  In fact all my efforts to blend colors together have turned out pretty poorly.  I don't really want to spoil this image with crap color work.  Perhaps I should put this on hold until I'm a little more confident in my color work...