Drawing a Superhero
/Words cannot begin to describe how excited I was for the Super Life Drawing session at The Comic Book Shoppe on Bank Street. As I walked down the stairs to the basement of the store, the Star Wars theme song was playing, there was promise of costumes and I was about to spend my afternoon drawing superheroes. Amazing.
Little did I know, however, I was also about to gain a whole new level of respect for graphic artists and Renaissance painters alike.
As a novice artist, I find I draw better when I don’t have to worry about clothing and props. When my model is nude, if I don’t want to use “foreshortening” (the technique I mentioned in my last post), I don’t have to. My hands may look like cow teats sometimes, but I'm usually able to embrace my little blunders and leave a workshop feeling content with my sketches overall. When you add clothing into the mix, however, things get tricky.
Our model at the Super Life Drawing session, the beautiful Cherry Valance, was dressed in an outfit that consisted of a long-sleeved stretchy bodysuit, hard-shell armor and a gun (which eventually switched to a light saber, but still didn’t end up helping my cause). And, as you can tell from my drawings, I had a hard time.
The artists’ challenge was to draw our model “using the force in a creative way,” but I was just trying to draw her without making her look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle holding a mini battleship. I failed.
I eventually found this simple tutorial, should you ever need to know how to draw a gun, that suggests first drawing lines and rectangles as guides instead of free-handing your sketch.
Next time, I'll be keeping with the costumed model theme as I discuss the night I attended a Mad Men-themed life drawing session with beer and very low lighting.
My first time drawing a hand holding a gun. nailed it.
Cindy Olberg
Cindy is an aspiring writer who has recently decided to adopt a new hobby. Equipped with her token sense of humour and limited artistic ability, she will take you on a tour of some of Ottawa’s life drawing workshops and hopefully inspire you along the way.
Follow Cindy on Twitter and Instagram
Find a life drawing workshop near you
