Using Photo Reference
Added 2023-06-17 18:43:33 +0000 UTCI always struggle drawing Spider-Man. There’s something about the flexible, acrobatic posing that I find a challenge, and more often than not I find my drawings of Spidey to be kind of stiff or unconvincing. This is where using photo reference can come in handy.
I try not to reference other artist’s drawings too much for posing, because I would rather not be too influenced by how they draw specific poses, and I wouldn’t want my drawing to end up being too similar. Often for superhero drawings I will look at photos of real people wearing the costumes. I found this image online that I liked:
The problem with using photo reference, particularly for dynamic posing, is that the camera often flattens out perspective and depth, and also that the human body is, for the most part, unable to move with the exaggerated range of a fictional drawn character. So, I will often manipulate the photo to push the pose - I’ll cut and reposition body parts, resize things, or just warp the image to make it feel less like a static photograph:
Now it’s ready to use to draw from! You can see in the above video how I sketched out this pose but then refined it even further in the drawing. I ended up being pretty satisfied with the final result.
