The Many Faces of Dick Grayson

I know I shared these pictures on my Instagram account, but in case you don’t follow me on Instagram, I thought I’d share these pictures here, too.

All these handsome faces belong to Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing from Batman. With his dashing good looks and a knack for ridiculous puns, Dick Grayson is easily one of my favorite characters.

What I Learned

I’m still an amateur artist, and I don’t have a lot of time to draw on a regular basis, so my progress is a bit slow. Normally I like to draw lots of different people all making different expressions so I can maximize my drawing practice.

But I realized that I lack a lot in consistency. When I draw so many different people, it’s easy to just say that’s how that person is shaped and move on. But by drawing just one person again and again, I started to notice that I needed to make the eyes the same shape, the jaw line needed to line up and the hairline needed to hit at just the right point.

I obviously didn’t nail each and every expression. There’s still a lot of variations between each drawing because I didn’t learn how to keep things consistent until I got into my third or fourth drawing. I also realized partway through that me focusing SO MUCH on consistency also kind of deadened his expressions, too. They weren’t as animated as I had hoped.

I think as I keep learning and drawing, I should focus on keeping basic shapes the same while still pushing that natural flow line. I shouldn’t be scared to squash or stretch features to exaggerate expressions. With cartoons, it’s often better to be over the top than precise.

Just Rambling Now . . .

Anywho, that was a big long rant about my art not being great. Probably not the most interesting thing to read, but I figured not many people are going to read this blog anyway. I’m just posting this stuff and sending it out into the void just because it makes me feel happy. I’m not sure why.