Drawing Pele, the Volcano Goddess

Have you heard of Pele, the Goddess of Fire?

I started writing a comic about her. I’m looking for some comedy and some romance. Poor Pele, she always loses at games, and in love!

I wanted to show you guys a series of drawings I’ve done for just the first page. This is how I work, and how you start, build, and finish a drawing! It’s important to know when you are working on gesture, forms, and details!

The first thing I’ll do is the gesture and layout. This is the stage to make sure that your pose is good! If you’re doing a background, take the time to put in some rough clouds, rocks, whatever you need. You can tell so much by just how people pose, and by looking at the flow between the objects and the empty space. It’s also the time to check that your proportions are right — check out the arms and legs for length, and the torso and head!

I was drawing these while working at a convention. I didn’t have a computer, but I wanted to show the different stages of the drawing. So, for this next picture, I redrew the gesture, and then moved on to the forms. Can you see the cylinder forms that I’m using for the arms, legs, and torso? Check out the lesson on cylinders!

I take this time in the drawing to make sure I know which body parts are hiding behind the others. I also start thinking about the contours and how each part will reflect light and cast shadow.

The next stage combines details and finish. So, I took the time to re-do the gesture, and forms on a new sheet of paper, and then added in the tattoos, clothes, shadows, and inks. I use the contours to catch the light and cast shadow. I use the contours to wrap her bracelets and anklets around.

And, wouldn’t you know it, this was when I only had printer paper around, so the waviness was kinda hard to scan ^^;;; Ah well, I hope the effect looks nice anyway!

But, since I was planning this as a comic, I re-did the gesture, forms, and finish on comic paper so that it’ll be good for scanning and coloring on the computer.