Could’ve been as easy as that.
From the Ming Doyle Virtual Archives: “Oekaki” sketches, drawn online with a mouse between 1999 - 2002 before I had a tablet.
Here’s my exclusive print design for Stumptown Comics Fest, ‘13! I had an amazing time at the show, thanks so much, PDX! ♥
Marceline, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl, three of the many free sketches I did at Comicazi last Saturday. Couldn’t grab pics of any others, alas!
Can you give any insight into your process of creating a characters' features? Mara and her brother I think are just really outstanding examples of well thought out and meticulous character design (which is clearly evident in all your drawings, but tackling 'family resemblance' like that just blew my mind)
(Two Princes: Mark and Mara)
Thanks Clay! Character consistency is something I struggled with for years and am still refining. On the one hand, I didn’t want to come up with a standard “face template” and have everyone in my art look identical, minus hair and coloring choices. On the other hand, how do you keep one face looking like itself across all those angles? It’s headache inducing!
I find that adjectives really help. Keeping descriptive words in your mind’s eye can help meld a drawing’s look. Mara and her brother Mark both have large, dark, almond shaped eyes, small pert noses, equally-sized plush top and bottom lips, and square-leaning-to-oval faces.
Those are a lot of specific descriptors because they’re important characters. For supporting cast, I may just resort to “shifty and blonde,” “Daniel Craig,” “equine and 40ish,” etc., and just try to draw true to the spirit of what those phrases evoke for me.
Words, words, words! A drawing is a sentence you can see.
