Drawing Digital Comics – How to Draw Spiderman Part 1
We’re back with another week of tutorials – this time around, we’re going to try another Marvel character. We’ve tackled Wolverine, and we’ve tried our hand at DC Comics’ Batman. This tutorial is going to show you how to draw a basic version of our favorite wall-crawler, Spiderman.
Follow along with this step by step tutorial on drawing a digital version of Spiderman, using Photoshop.
Starting Pose
We want to start our figure with a simple stick figure. Spidey usually contorts himself into these strange positions when he’s swinging around, but in this case, we’ll just keep it simple. Create your mannequin form using circles for joints and appendages, and lines for the bones.
Now that we have our basic form set up, we can rough in our form. Create a new layer, and label it as ‘rough.’ This is where your first pass at the drawn form will be done.
Set this layer to an opacity of about 25%. We want to be able to see what we’re doing, but the linework should probably be fairly loose – since you’re not going off of any reference in this tutorial. You will probably erase and re-draw a few times to get the angles and forms set up the way you like them.
Draw your basic shapes, with your skeleton underneath as your guide. Feel free to modify the pose if it doesn’t appear to work the way you imagined. It is better to try and fix things at this stage, rather than doing a full render and realizing you want to change the position of an item after the fact.
Sketch in the basic form – we’re putting meat on the bones! Now that the exterior form has been drawn, make sure you are happy with the positions of your limbs and proportions. Make your edits now before you head into the next step…
Refining your Pencils
Create a new layer named ‘PENCILS‘, and reduce your rough layer to 25-50% so it is a grey tone. Proceed to draw a refined version of your initial form drawing below. You can begin to define your muscles, features and minor details.
Draw your fingers, head position, arms and legs.
Continue with the refined pencil outlines. Feet, musculature, etc.
Create Spiderman’s classic mask. Two big bug eyes in the shape of tortilla chips. At least that’s how I like to describe them…
Make sure you draw your linework that determines where the gloves, boots, belt and mask are.
The next step is to draw in the details of Spidey’s costume. Since we are doing the two-tone version (classic!) we have to create our linework spanning the gloves, across the tops of the shoulder, then tapering down to the waist belt. The armpit area is the dark blue, along with the underside of the arms and the legs.
Basic Costume Details
Beginning with the mask, draw a small ragged circle between the eyes of the mask. This is the center of the web. Start drawing a set of lines that radiate outwards from this circle. Make sure the lines create the contours of the head shape.
By drawing your lines in curved shapes, you create the illusion of a solid, round form.
When you’ve completed the first pass, your mask should look something like this.
Now, we will finish the web look by creating segments of curved lines that cross these lines that we just drew. When you draw a line that crosses perpendicular to the ones previously drawn, add a bit of a curve to it, in order to make the pattern resemble a spider web.
Your completed mask should look something like this.
Darken the borders around Spidey’s eyes, so they don’t get lost amongst the web pattern on the mask. Continue the web pattern on the area you’ve separated on his costume. Create a contour and depth by using curved lines that follow the body parts.
Your figure should have the vertical lines drawn. Now its time for the horizontal segments that will complete the web look.
Darken the line that defines the chin. We don’t want to lose that form either…
Follow the natural path of the limbs. Neck, to shoulder, to elbow, to forearm. Remember to curve your lines to create that volume.
Here’s the finished sample of the top half of the costume with the web pattern.
The detail on the hands is a bit simpler. You only need horizontal lines to create a contour form. But, with all those drawn lines, you’ll definitely want to outline the fingers and thumb, otherwise they will disappear into a mess of squiggly lines.
Draw in the pattern for your gloves and boots, and you’re almost done with the pencils.
Spiderman’s logo is easy to draw. There’s been some very detailed versions, but the easiest way to remember how to draw it the same way each time is to build it using numbers and letters.
Draw a number 8. Make the top loop smaller than the bottom.
For the legs, draw to L shapes on the left. On the right, two upside-down 7s. On the bottom left, draw two lower case r shapes. On the bottom right, draw two number 7s. Easy!
There’s your finished pencils. Now we’ll add in more details with inks!
Inking your Drawing of Spiderman
Create a new layer, label it as your INK layer. on this layer, draw a thick black outline around your character. I suggest using a calligraphic brush in order to get differing line weights.
Once your outline has been done, start inking in your solid pools of black shadow. You can define your muscles, create depth, etc.
Keep adding your inked shadows as you see fit. Don’t overwork your drawing too much, otherwise it turns into a mess of black ink. So far, so good! Let’s add some details and finish this up!
Finishing Details
What would Spiderman do without his webs? It’s a key element that has to be included, so let’s draw the in! Draw a series of squiggly messy lines firing off in different directions. I chose to curl one set of webs shooting out of Spidey’s spinner.
Back in the day, artists merely drew Spidey’s webs as straight lines. In the late 80s, Todd McFarlane elaborated on the look of the webs by making them more detailed and fibrous. To this day, the technique is still used and the style is preferred. To achieve the fiber look, draw a series of curved lines that appear to wrap around your curly shapes.
Insert these fibers at random points on your webs.
To add more detail to the webs, create a series of smaller curly lines that link from your “knots” of curled lines. This further enhances the organic look of the fiber-web.
To finish off the look of the web, trace a line that follows the curve of the original web curve you drew. It now looks like there are fibers wrapped around fibers, entangled in fibers. That would be a hell of a web to be caught in!
Complete the other web, and you’re done. A completely drawn and inked Spiderman from scratch. If you made it this far, be proud. You’ve digitally drawn Spiderman in only a few steps.
Next week, we will begin colour tutorials for this Spiderman drawing, our past Wolverine drawing, and our last Action Pose tutorial. See you next time!
February 16th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
[...] we last left off in the previous tutorial, we penciled and inked ourselves a pretty rad looking Spider-Man slinging his webs. This time [...]
June 13th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
the webbing on his suit definitely makes it a lot harder!
June 19th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Kudos for the great information, It was just what I was searching for, and very useful.