I dream pencils at night. I do. I dream sketching pads and ready-to-be-inked super heroes drawings. I dream that I have an art supply store combined with a comics shop. Last time I drew was 3 years ago. This is the confession of a person who always wanted to draw but other things got in his way.

A small piece of my life was missing and I finally realized which it was. Drawing things. Everytime when I read a manga or a comic book, I want to draw. But I kept telling myself ‘’Hey, let it be!’’. I watch people drawing super-heroes and manga characters on Youtube, and I drool. Not because I want to draw like they do, but because I just want to draw. Its a hunger. I think I even enjoy more the books about comics and manga than the actual comics and manga. I cannot think that someone who doesn’t have a passion for drawing can fully understand me. Or I am wrong.

To get in the mood, lets watch comic-book artists and legends John Romita, Joe Kubert, John Buscema, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Gibbons and Travis Charest. It doesn’t get better than this. Watch the related videos to get the second and third part. I need a napkin.

You may find this article boring, but I enjoyed writing it. I am weird anyway.

Next, I will present some of the art supplies that I decided to buy to re-launch my drawing habits. First thing that I did was to go on Amazon and shop a bunch of wonders that made up a pretty nice sum on the shopping cart. I pondered about universe, life and why things cost money, and decided to buy only the essentials. So I ordered the art supplies from a site here in Dracula land.

Erasers! No artist can live without them. My target were some cheap pencil erasers. A normal eraser and a plastic eraser from the same Czech brand. Depending on what pencils and paper are you using, you may want to use one or another, which one is better suited for the situation. One more thing. Plastic erasers don’t make such a mess. I love plastic erasers! I also need a kneaded rubber eraser. It has the consistency of clay, so it can be easily shaped, split into pieces and even put around the tip of a pencil.

A 0.5 mm mechanical pencil is the base for any drawing, in my opinion. I prefer it to a normal wood pencil, because it excels at drawing details and it doesn’t need sharpening. The one that I have chosen is a Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Mephisto Profi. I like it because of the rubber that protects your fingers and the perfect diameter. I want also to try one that has metal protuberances instead of rubber. Like THESE ones. And I think I will need a 0.9 mm one in the future, but now really I don’t want to spend too much just re-learning how to draw.

The next one is a big boy. Mephisto Selfactor is a 5.6 mm gun, like is called in the artist medium. It can be filled it with 5.6 mm leads from H to 8B (H being the harder lead, 8B the softest), colored leads and even a special eraser lead. Very useful to fill up, to draw shadows or sketch things that don’t require too many details. Now I realized I completely forget to order refills for this one.

Basically, you can also draw with a normal HB pencil (normal writing pencil) on normal paper if you don’t want to spend money. All you need is passion and some talent. Of course, there are more things to buy. Some 0.7, 0.9 and 2.5 mm mechanical pencils, some brushes, ink, quality paper, a ruler and many more.

And because my aim is not nature, life or realistic drawings, I went to Amazon to search some how-to-draw-comics books that will guide me through. I may add that maybe there are better choices out there but after reading some reviews and taking a peak inside, I decided that these two are a good starting point for me. I mention that I’m not an absolute beginner, and that I have good notions about muscles, proportions and drawing techniques.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way maybe is not the most complete book out there, but the artist featured in it is John Buscema (RIP John), and this thing made me choose it. This is more like an ABC on how to draw comics, but still there are things inside that I don’t know. And the cover looks cool. The second, and perhaps a little bit more advanced book, is Draw Comics with Dick Giordano.

Then, there is the human body. The how-to-draw-comics books cannot fully supplement a proper artistic anatomy, like Dynamic Anatomy Revised and Expanded, by Burne Hogarth. The bookw of Hogarth on artistic anatomy are THE books to read if you want to learn how to draw muscles, postures, fibers and great proportions. If you don’t know, Burne Hogarth is the legendary artist who drew Tarzan for many years. This is an essential book to every aspiring artist. I highly recommend it, but watch out, there are some bad editions out there.

But is not enough to draw characters, I also have to position them in the page and put a proper background. Which often is a perspective. The so called vanishing point is that point at the horizon where all the lines that give the perspective unite. And here where Vanishing Point comes to supplement my lack in knowledge about perspective. I chose this one totally random. I still didn’t make the order on the books, as I’m still waiting for my art supplies to arrive, but I guess there four will be the actual order. If not more!

Of course, you can use the same supplies to draw manga, just replace the books with some manga how-to.

One more thing. My desk is totally not proper for drawing. I don’t have space on it to put a sketch pad. There is that drawer where the keyboard should go. That would save some space but not enough and I hate to put my keyboard there. Maybe I can buy a small table to draw on it, or dump this desk and buy a bigger one. So that’s going to be a problem. And I have a brand new Wacom graphic tablet bought 6 months ago, which I barely used. Poor thing. I may end up making some tutorials on the ABC of drawing, but much later, when I will get back in touch with it. I’m freak enough to do it. What about you? Do you have any drawing talent or artistic inclinations?

For those of you interested in art supplies links, I gathered some. For those of you who are weird enough to read reviews about mechanical pencils, erasers and art supplies.

Art supplies shops

http://www.utrechtart.com

http://www.dickblick.com

Reviews

http://robotninjamonsters.blogspot.com

http://davesmechanicalpencils.blogspot.com

http://www.penciltalk.org

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