For the young ones

If you feel, you like drawing comic characters. You take a comic book, a blank paper and start copying. More or less every one starts the same way, who would draw comic books professionally later. But if you have just started, few tips will help you leap ahead few steps in the way to become a book artist. :)

First thing would be the scale of your drawing: No artwork is drawn in the scale you see in the printed book. It is always 1.5 to 2 times bigger. So if you chose to draw a picture from comic book get it xeroxed 1.5 times bigger or enlarge it to fit an A-3 (11"x17") approx. now start copying... otherwise you will have to adjust the scale of your drawing, once you start to draw for production.

We always need some kind of tool(s) to perform a task. For drawing comic books, we are going to use some tools as well. Art stores are filled with art materials, but we don't need all of them for drawing comics. I have tried to pull out the ones that are most useful to us. In better words the ones that i use.

Lets start with Pencil (the great one) which pencillers will be using the most. Pencils com in a wide range, from hard to soft or from wooden encased to mechanical to sticks (without wooden encasing). Now choosing them depends entirely how hard you are on paper and how you hold them. The pencil you chose is going to effect your style of drawing. If you like clean and sharp lines, you might want to go with a mechanical pencil. If you prefer sketchy lines wooden encased pencils will do better.