Working on modifying, combining and arranging the basic forms on my warmup sheets,

And for the figures I'm trying to develop my own way to do the little gesture thumbnails, so I'm not copying the way somebody else draws.

Now that I pushed a leg back on these figures the word balloon no longer makes sense. Tried putting a sack over the man's head suggesting an impending execution, but it looked more like a girl's hair, so I went with that. I like the way these figures all seem to stand on the same ground plane and even to be in the same image, though I drew them separately. Maybe my mind is starting to think in terms of whole compositions. I suppose that's a step up in the levels of complexity. And because the second figure is an echo of the first, with the same basic arm positioning and torso angle, they seem to be standing together, as if looking at the goat-demon or whatever it is.

Dave Finch said the key to being a comic book artist is to really learn the basic figures - the little comic gestures I've been drawing so much. That's where the magic really happens, not learning to draw muscles or faces in excruciating detail. All that surface stuff comes later - you need to be able to draw the figure dynamically and make it look right first. Any position, any viewing angle, any lighting. The outline/silhouette suggests most of the anatomy - very little need for any detail inside. And when you can do the outline right, everything else falls into place.

And I know - I'm doing Heroic Fantasy art, not comic books. But they're pretty similar - comics are just a lot more exaggerated.

And hey, ya gotta do the anatomy studies too...