 I'm going to do something a little bit different. We're not going to have a toy review this weekend. So instead I thought I would do a drawing. Now I've been doing these drawings lately as thumbnail images for some of my older videos. My older videos didn't have any kind of branding or anything like that on the thumbnail images. It's basically just used a screen capture from within the video. I didn't really look too good so I've been trying to replace those. I thought it might be a good idea to have something that looks a little better for those videos. So I've been doing these drawings and then of course after I scanned them in and I used them for the thumbnail, I've been putting the drawings on eBay and much to my surprise you guys have snatched up everything that I've put on eBay and that is very flattering and very humbling that you guys would even be interested in something that I drew. So this time I'm going to do a drawing and I'm going to actually have the camera on so you can watch me through this process. For this drawing I will be doing storm shadow and I have the storm shadow action figure just off to the side here for reference so I can look at them. Then before I even got started when I had some idle time I did a couple quick sketches so I could figure out what pose I wanted to put storm shadow in. Now my first option was this one and this has storm shadow drawing his bow back. It has the arrow and I liked this. It's basically waist up and I liked this pose. I thought this was pretty good. I liked the energy of the bow string being pulled back but it wasn't quite right. It wasn't... I had a couple problems with it. First of all I do like the energy of the bow string being pulled back but I also like the tension of the crisscross lines in the chest and then like the tension between the body that sort of bowed back and the arms and the lines from the bow string and the arrow I felt interfered with that and actually broke up some of that tension so I tried something else. I tried a second sketch and this has storm shadow just after he has fired his bow so the arrow is not present and the bow string is straight up and down. His arms are a little more loose and his grip on the bow is a little more loose but there's nothing to interfere with this wonderful tension in the crisscross lines across his chest and his broad shoulders and his arms up. I think this is the pose that I'm going to go with so I'm going to have this sketch kind of over here off to the side too just so I can look at that for reference. Now let's take a look at the materials that I'll be using. I have a plain white 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and I have a ballpoint pen and that's it. That's all I'm using. I have been drawing in pen lately which is a bit of a surprise. My medium has always been pencil ever since I was a kid but in the last year or so I have really been enjoying just drawing with pen. I just feel like the drawings come out with more energy when I draw with pen. I'm not really sure why that is but you know I've been enjoying it that way so I'm just going to kind of go with it. So this one will be in pen. Hopefully it'll also show up on camera better so you'll be able to see it better so that'll help with that as well. I will be drawing mostly on this side of the page and the reason I'm doing that is because I'm doing this for a thumbnail image and in the thumbnail the drawing will be on this side of the screen and on this side of the screen there will be text. Now obviously once I scan it in I can move the image around any way I want to but just by drawing on this side of the page just helps me keep in mind how I'm going to crop this when I'm done and put it on the thumbnail and it helps you just remember that I can't go too far over in this area because there's going to be text there and so I'm just doing that really for my benefit and just keeping that just to keep it in mind the graphic design purposes of this whole thing. So I'll try to confine my drawing mainly to this half of the page. With that let's get started and I'm going to start by always start with the head and I'll just find the where the head's going to be here sketch it in probably a little bit too low and make sure it's high enough on the page I'm doing this very lightly because this is not in pencil I can't erase it so I get an idea of the shape of the head needs to be a little bit more round he's going to be his head is going to be turned this direction so let's kind of get an idea where that's going to be a little bit of a jaw line there and let's see there's the center line right down his nose to his chin the high level the nose level and there's the mouth kind of I kind of like to just make the head a little more three-dimensional get an idea of the curves and the contours of it that'll help me later now let's see his neck here it's got his head's turned to the side so shoulders are going to be up here and just kind of sketching a line for where his shoulders are going to be shoulders are going to be slightly up more toward this side and then let's see his spine will be tilted back slightly I like what I liked in the preliminary sketches for these these lines here for the torso I felt that worked out pretty well and then arm will be foreshadowed hand to be right about there and the other one is going to be back here and has just let the bow or let the arrow go kind of still drawn back there like so a nice sharp elbow there all right fill all that in later as we go now let's see his chest just about like that his rib cage in his belt to be I don't know about in this area ish belt tied to the side there all right and I know I've got these lines are going to crisscross crosses chest he's got the bandolier across his chest here fairly wide an idea where that's going to be make sure it curves properly so it looks like it really is going across his chest in three dimensions and now there's a buckle on it right about there ish we'll put the details in that in later right about there we know he's got a cobra symbol right about there worked on that later just trying to get an idea of where everything is going to be now I had to a decision to make on whether I wanted storm shout out to be wearing his his sleeveless shirt as he appears in the comic book or if I wanted him to be more toy accurate and wear his short sleeve shirt and I believe I'm going to go with the short sleeve shirt but that was not an easy decision because I really do understand why they draw in the comic book they drew him with that that sleeveless shirt because it really does let you broaden the shoulders quite a bit and show off the the arm muscles and and that it really looks really cool I think it's probably a better look than the than the short sleeve on the figure but trying to be a little more figure accurate so I thought I would go with the short sleeves and just try to make it work make it look as good as I can so I've got I've got a curve on this arm here it's not perfectly straight and of course this arm is bent and then we've got it's gonna have a hand like a finger partially extended there and his other fingers are gonna grip around that bow like that and I apologize if you can't see this too well but I do have to go do this fairly lightly because I'm going to be filling this in with much darker lines once I figure out where everything belongs so let's figure out where the bow is gonna go let's see the bow is probably not gonna be perfect because normally if I were doing this for professional purposes I would use some tools to get this bow to look just right exactly as it should symmetrical and perfect but we're not not quite pros right now so I'm gonna do a nice it's gonna be fairly small bow but he the figure came with a pretty small bow let's see and I would actually kind of like to have a straight edge to do this bow string gonna be something somewhere right about right about right about there now there's a difficulty in drawing with a ballpoint pen that you borrow from the office and that is that these ballpoint pens aren't made to do this this is not their purpose in life so you're asking the tool to do something that it really isn't designed to do and it after a while it just wants to quit on you well that's okay these are just challenges and there's an old adage that it's the poor artist that blames his tools so we will not blame our tools for any poor outcome we always will make do with what we have so Bo will be right about their ish not perfect but not terrible okay let's see that hand is gonna should be a little bit larger because it's a little bit closer and this hand be a little bit smaller it's drawn back a bit more but he's got a couple fingers extended because he has just let the arrow go now hands are a challenge I used to be really good at drawing hands but having not drawn for a few years it's a skill that I've mostly forgotten I've had to reacquire and that is the biggest challenge that I've had in doing these drawings lately is re-learning how to draw hands just remembering exactly where the knuckles go and where the bones in the hands are remember trying to remember my hand anatomy which I learned many years ago but haven't used in many years so we basically got it now he has a knife tucked into his belt let's give him his knife it's something like this on the figure the knife doesn't come out the other side of the belt you only see the knife handle but try to make him a little bit more realistic and draw the whole knife stuck in his belt like so like so and the hand the handle on that knife is has a shape to it something like something like that can't be too large or it'll take up too much of our real estate here without I should do our belt our belt is right around here ish and let's see let's give him a throwing stars tucked into his belt right about there all right little tunic thing comes down here and like so like so like so all right come down here like so his neck all right so I basically figure out where everything's going to be it's now just sort of a matter of filling it in and trying to make it look halfway decent and so there we go let's let's start filling this in and making a storm shadow tend to start with the head and start with the eyes because it's kind of it kind of just that really decides the tone of the rest of the drawing eyebrows find the eye placement in the in the card art his eyes are kind of wide and maniacal looking and I don't know it's to be not quite that he won't be quite that wide-eyed he's gonna be looking off in this direction because that's where he is fired his arrow as we know storm shadow is the master archer whereas snake eyes was the better swordsman let's see now you know we're not gonna completely draw in the nose in the mouth I just want to know where they are and see his mask come up around here to expose his eyes everything else will be hidden let's see is that how I want it let's see and get the edge of that face a little bit better like so see where's that cheekbone maybe a hint of an ear under the mask but that mask is gonna conceal much so I don't want to have too many lines in that mask all right let's give him a little bit more menace in his face a little bit more anger and aggression give him some lines in his brow just so we know that he is in kill mode that will probably about do all right let's move on now this is cloth see into tunics goes about there ish a collarbone lines in his neck that heads just not exactly what I'm thinking we're gonna make it work gonna make it look as good as we can now let me go ahead and sketch in a bit of a cobra symbol here because we know where it'll be don't want it too big on the figure it's not too big it's a great one of the all-time great design logo designs I think that there ever was I mean it's so instantly recognizable done by Ron Rudat who is I mean he guy really knew what he was doing so be something like this and of course it comes down a little bit more to a point points at the end see here tell you ballpoint pens don't are not for drawing they are not I have thought about getting some better art tools which I used to have used to but I haven't done this in a long time but you know I've been I've been reluctant to you know get a whole bunch of tools drawing tables specialized pencils specialized pens paper and all that because you know I kind of want to maintain my amateur status you might say because I've been enjoying this but as soon as I start to throw all this investment into it then it's not really for fun anymore so I want to try to make sure that I keep it fun keep it at that level and as long as I keep enjoying it then I'll keep doing it okay all right we got an idea where the shoulders are the chests are the chests are the chest is rib cage the muscles on his back that we can see from the side we'll get a little few lines for the cloth here now we've got to start filling in the details basically everything that you will draw will be made up of one of three basic shapes either a cube a cylinder or a sphere and human body is made up of mostly spheres and cylinders but you can you can draw almost anything with those three basic shapes although I do sometimes like to break some parts of the body down into cubes especially male forms because they tend to look a little bit better sometimes if they're a little more angular got his wrist bands here the arms of course are basically cylinders and you can make a cylinder feel more solid and three-dimensional by using a few curved lines in the right places and at the right right angles okay all right starting to take shape here starting to look like storm shadow now there while I'm at this stage before I get too far along there are a couple things that I need to make sure that I add now on my sketch I had his backpack just you just barely see his backpack you don't see a lot of his backpack but we've got his arrows sticking out here over his shoulder and I've got his swords now on this sketch he has three swords he has a sword here a sword here and a sword here that's because my original idea was to have you know one sword up here and the other sword will be down here where he would draw it from under the arm but that line really I think interfered with the line on the underside of the arm so I ended up not liking that so I'm gonna go ahead and have the other sword also over the shoulder and hopefully that'll work all right so let's see let's just get an idea of where our arrows are gonna be you won't see much of the backpack because it'll be behind his back but we do need to make sure that storm shadow has his swords let's see here angle on that sword to be something like that all right it's mostly gonna be seeing the swords from a right angle so we'll have to try to make sure that those cylinders look solid and three-dimensional and I can already tell that my drawing that I'm doing here doesn't have quite the same energy level as my sketch and that just always is the case when you go from a sketch to a fully rendered drawing just lose some of the energy and that's something that maybe some other better artists have been able to learn how to manage but that's something that a problem that I have and I know that's a problem that some other artists also have so the swords will be there and we'll add some detail there we'll add some detail on the arrows as we go but I'm not gonna worry about that right now I'm just looking for the positioning the rest of his backpack let's see where would his backpack be I guess we might see a little bit of it over here but I don't I don't want to break up I want this line I don't want to add too much over here to break that up so yeah I don't think I like that at all I'm actually not gonna finish filling that in so his backpack is gonna be mostly concealed behind his back now let's let's keep working using the natural lines between the chest and the shoulder and the tricep and the bicep you can get some of that feeling of depth on the arm just by making those curves in the right places let's see so we've got the got the short sleeve on both arms hopefully it's coming out to look about the same length on each side and yeah I mean that I mean I think it would look better if it were that no sleeve shirt that he had in the comic book but we've made a commitment we're gonna stick with it gonna make this look as good as we can make it look let's see the elbow there all right an idea of where this is gonna be elbow forearm all right okay let's see let's go ahead and draw this hand in a little bit get an idea of where where that thing's gonna go got a thumb maybe a thumbnail here should look a little larger than that hand because it is closer to the viewer okay we got a kind of a finger extended here we have this one partially extended kind of bent like that and then this one we're like that and this one pinky finger is the smallest and fold it over like that that should grip our bow the muscles in the hands all right now that bow probably a little smaller than I wanted it to be but that's okay we only have so much space on the page and storm shadow came with a small bow anyway so that's fine the bow of course is a cylinder just sort of stretched out and pinched at the ends so I'm gonna remember how to draw cylinders so that we can make this look good and round and three-dimensional but not perfect it's gonna be a little sketchy because I'm not using any tools so try to make that look good I don't really have anything handy to use as a straight edge I really this really ought to be the bowstring ought to be done with the straight edge I don't have one so it'll work with what we got always do the best we can with what we have and we don't complain for doing my toy reviews I do not have the best camera I do not have the best laptop to edit things on I do not have often I do not have the best toys to review but we do not complain we soldier on all right let's see it's probably a little bit of a wrapping around the around the bow okay looking all right looking all right now we're not gonna I'm not gonna draw in the legs or anything else I just want to know where they are because this drawing will stop right about there because when I do it when I crop it I'm probably gonna crop it like like that and then over here will be the text so I really don't need to draw anything down here for my purposes so let's see let's do a little bit of work here feel like we need to draw in that belt a little bit more since that is a bit closer to the screen that's like I'm just looking at it in layers this is closer to the top layer and I'm not I'm got a little bit of lines in there suggesting that the belt is wrapped around him a couple times and then tied this do is sort of guess at what a knot would look like with that belt and then the rest of the belt hangs down like so and that's on the figure the belt is on that side so that's what I'm looking at the figure came off the stand so please stay on your stand Mr. Storm Shadow all right there are a lot of different things I could have done with this drawing I could have drawn the Yoroshikage tattoo on his arm with if I put him in a different pose I could have had him posing with the sword as he was on the card art and I love that card art excellent excellent card arch for Storm Shadow but I thought Storm Shadow is the master bowman so let's let's give him his bow all right now let's let's figure out what's going on with this sash here which I always assumed held his backpack it's thick looks to me like it's made of leather it's got a big spiky buckle on it something like this like so that reasonably matches the figure yeah about like that so we got that figured out now I'm not going to use my ballpoint pen to darken that in and make it black of course it's black on the figure but it's not gonna be black on the drawing when I finish this and color it and then scan it in for it to use for the thumbnail image I will when in the coloring phase I'll color that in darker so that it's more accurate to the toy but for now I'm just gonna have it as it is and you know not not try to not try to color it in with this thing that would not work very well so let's see here let's see got a bit of a loose cloth around there but I feel like the cloth mostly gonna be the belt is gonna layer over the cloth quite a bit I don't feel like the belt is pinching the cloth of the tunic very much let's this knife drawn in maybe slightly larger than it appears on the figure I do understand why they made it smaller on the figure because frankly it takes up a lot of space as I've drawn it here okay and there was oh there's a throwing star right here it's kind of poking out see something like something like something like that can't have it sticking too far out of his belt or it would fall out when he moves so it's gonna be tucked in there pretty well all right and the belt the same as the the bandolier I'm not going to color in the belt will be black once I do it in the coloring phase before I scan it in like so yeah I wish I hadn't put that there I don't I don't want to see the backpack on down here it just interferes and it weakens the line here to have this line here so I'm just gonna ignore that and what maybe when I scan it in I'll after I scan it in I'll crop that out or gently erase it digitally before I finish or before I do the cropping all right let's see we're pretty close I think we just need to finish rendering everything sword doesn't have to be perfect close enough is good enough for these I keep reminding myself that at this time in my life I do not have the luxury of being a perfectionist about anything it's got too much going on too much going on perfection takes too much time and I don't have it so I think we got something going there basically the same on this side something like that sort is back there but it's in shadow kind of over his shoulder there and let's get some arrows going here let's see here I'm mainly basically kind of suggest the arrows not going to completely render the arrows because I don't want a bunch of hyper detail over his shoulder here to draw away from the rest draw the eyes attention away from the rest of the drawing we would waste our time if we do all of our work to make a nice storm shadow here but instead of seeing the storm shadow the viewer sees like for some reason some hyper detailed arrows over on his shoulder we're not trying to draw the eyes attention away from our figure drawing okay so let's go ahead and finally finish rendering that head it's just a little off better eyes are always tricky getting them facing in both the same direction and trying to not make the person look cross-eyed that is tricky and I don't always succeed but I hope most of the time I do think I do better at that than I do drawing hands that's for sure alright little hint of cloth folds there and his mask don't want to overdo it see there's a level of detail that we want in this drawing beyond that we are just being distracting so there will be probably about where we stop with the head it's about right make sure I got this shoulder the way I want it there's some folds in the cloth because his arm is raised our nice cylinder of an arm looking three-dimensional feel like this arm is still looking a little fatter than the other arms so I'm gonna just kind of draw it in a little bit okay now this one out a little bit okay so you know that his wrapping is kind of coiled around his arm there so let's add some of that detail here and also over here don't mind a little extra detail on those arm bands because again with some curves it makes those arms look more three dimensional let's finish in the cobra symbol here awfully difficult to draw by hand as you probably will have noticed in some of the GI Joe comic books some of the artists that tried to just kind of sketch in the cobra symbol sometimes it didn't work out so good didn't look too great and I may not look too great on this one but it will look as good as I can get it so there we go and make sure that his chest is a little bit more defined strong shadow is of course very athletic being a ninja right I feel like the belt is done belt needs a few more lines okay what's missing we got to finish rendering this hand over here it should be a little bigger than the other hand but not too much bigger it is a challenge I struggle with this I don't lie I struggle with it I used to be a lot better I think but that's when I was wanting to be a comic book artist that's what I always wanted to be my whole life that was my plan that was my life plan to go to art school and to become a comic book artist well I did go to art school but the rest of the planets didn't quite work out the way that I intended and that's okay you know life intervened and I don't mind so much because I am very happy with how things turned out so I don't have any regrets and despite the fact that I don't draw for a living I still get to do this every once in a while when I feel like it let's see this is going to be a little bit shadowed because his hand is over it there like so let's see what are we missing what are you missing got that got that got that feel like there's like a seam line or something here but I haven't quite defined it yet because I really don't know what to do with it I think I'm just gonna leave that and I think we might have it I think we might have a finished storm shadow there we go I'm gonna call that good that's our storm shadow here's a comparison between the final sketch and the final drawing the fully rendered drawing and my sketch of scoring strong shadow that I was looking at just for a guide for this and you can see that the sketch does have a lot more energy there's just a lot more going on here the bow is bigger the arm is a bit more forward he's leaning back a bit more which I liked I didn't quite capture that in the final drawing but overall I think it's alright I think this is okay at least it's okay for my purposes so that's it I just wanted to show you through or take you through this process and show you what I do when I do one of these drawings I'm going to color this guy in I'm gonna scan it in and then I will I guess put this up on eBay and see if anybody's interested in it so there's storm channel thanks everyone for watching thanks for your patience there will be a new toy review next weekend I'm already working on that I hope you like it it's kind of a bit more I put a bit more work into that one and maybe you'll see another quick shot or two between now and then so thanks again for watching I'll see you all next time