Draw with Brian #7
Magician Sneaking Away 2 — Blocking
In this episode of Draw with Brian, we begin a new illustration for Derrick and Max.
This video focuses on the blocking stage — establishing composition, perspective, and character placement before refining details.
Sometimes the process is the most interesting part.
Transcript
Hello everyone, welcome to Draw with Brian. I’m Brian. Welcome to the channel — or welcome back to the channel.
Today we’re starting something new. Up to this point, I’ve mostly been working on existing drawings, but today we’re beginning a brand-new one. I’m going to get everything set up first, so if you just want to jump ahead to the drawing, feel free to skip forward a couple of minutes.
Let’s get our canvas set up for Derrick and Max. We’ll use our preset “Derrick and Max – One Page.” If we look at the print size, this equals 11 by 8.5 inches. This is sized for full bleed in a print book. Digital can handle whatever resolution we throw at it, but for an 8.5 by 8.5 printed book, this gives us the extra space needed so the artwork goes cleanly to the edges after trimming.
Now let’s load some reference images. I want the King and Black Knight shouting, and also the original Magician Sneaking Away illustration. This new version is going to replace that earlier one.
Previously, we had zoomed out to a two-page battle spread. Then we zoomed in on Derrick yelling at everyone to stop. After that, we pulled back to show the effect of that moment. Now we’re zooming back in to the King and Black Knight shouting. It doesn’t make sense to zoom out again — we’ve already established the big picture. So we’re going to stay zoomed in.
A cool thing in ArtRage is that if your reference image is in the way, you can drag it to another screen if you have one. Today we’re just focusing on blocking.
At this stage, I want to block out the composition. I think we’re going to look over Derrick’s shoulder. If the King was previously to Derrick’s left (our right), and we flip the perspective, we’re now seeing what Derrick sees.
So we block in some simple shapes — nothing final. The King is tall, much taller than the Black Knight. In earlier drawings, Derrick came up to about the King’s chest or neck. So we adjust height accordingly.
We’re just working with basic forms — circles, lines, placement. Nothing polished.
It’s actually evening while I’m recording this. Usually I do these in the morning, and I’m definitely more of a morning person, so we’ll see how long we last tonight.
Now let’s add the magician in the background. In the previous scene he was more foreground. Now that we’ve flipped perspective, he’ll be smaller and farther back. We can move him around using layers until the composition feels right.
This is why layers are useful — we can hide things, adjust things, merge things, and reposition without starting over.
Sometimes it helps to flip the canvas horizontally to spot composition issues, but I won’t do that just yet.
Let’s name our layers properly. This one will be “Background Rough.” When I’m doing roughs, I start in the back and work forward. When I’m inking, I work front to back.
Why? During roughs, I want to see everything behind the foreground elements. During inking, there’s no reason to draw details that will be hidden by something in front.
Earlier, I had layer order issues, which caused some bleed-through problems. Derrick was placed incorrectly in the layer stack. Hopefully we’ll avoid that mistake this time.
We’ll lightly block in the sand, tower, and background walls — just enough to indicate stone texture without drawing every brick. That would take forever.
The magician might be turned slightly more away from us, perhaps looking over his shoulder as he sneaks off.
Let’s grab one more reference — Max from behind — just to make sure proportions are right. Actually, maybe Max should be running with him. I can always add that later.
All right. I think this composition works.
Let’s save it. We’ll call this Magician Sneaking Away 2.
Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed seeing the blocking process. Maybe next time we’ll get deeper into drawing rather than just compositional setup. But sometimes the process is the interesting part.
Feel free to check out my website at bdcrowell.com. If you enjoy this kind of content, like and subscribe.
Until next time — keep drawing, and try to bring some beauty into the world.
Created November 1, 2025.
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