Need some tips drawing ice and fire!

[AMZinthos]

My character has the power to manipulate his own body temperature. On the left he can lower it enough to produce ice from the air humidity and on the right he can increase it enough to set his own fur on fire (which is resistant to burns yet still flamable)...

Anyway the point is, I been trying to draw my character with flames and ice covering his gloves/arms and so far I only been able to draw flames though not that good as for ice I don't even know where to start :( does anyone have any tips for that? also I have to make it look like ice without any colors for now.

Even with references its still not easy to do so if anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it  ;D

Oh and here are the references I been trying to use:




one piece weeabo GO

[Runemist34]

I've found that the challenge with fire is that fire is in constant movement. We cannot freeze it long enough to have a picture, thus most pictures of fire look blurry, to some extent. In drawings, the challenge then is to give a sense of movement, even if it's not really wooshing around, as in your example. Think more like a log that's on fire, if you're going for hands or arms: Fire kind of grabs onto it like a many-fingered hand, it curves both down and up, and in some places it's tall, some it's not. It varies all the time, because fire is always moving, right?
Also, the glowing. Fire glows brightest at the ends of each tall flame, and very red at the base, sometimes even seems to be transparent at the base, too. The glowing is the hard part for me. Sometimes (as in your picture) you can get away with discarding the glow, but it really depends on how it's portrayed (as in, your art style).
As for ice, in your example there, the ice is glowing, as well. I don't know if you'd like that to be a feature, as it is not entirely necessary. Depending on your kind of ice, it can be either opaque or transparent, or a combination of the two. For the combo, think about how ice forms: We get snowflakes, crystals, etc. and most of those are opaque. You can even create patterns within the ice with white, and the rest be transparent.
The trick for ice is the shine, I think. Ice is usually, if not always, shiny. This, as far as I can tell, is the best way to show ice.
Perhaps if you hunted around on Deviant Art, or other internet sites for other references, you could find some other ways of showing the two.

Also, writing this out helped me want to draw more, too! :birdy:

[AMZinthos]

Drawing is fun! do it :3.

I know those aren't the best examples and with those characters the can change the entire constitution of their bodies to their assigned element. So basically their arm can go missing and just be a huge block of ice/fire or they can completely change their bodies into an iceberg/fireball which is different from what my character is capable of doing so I gotta keep in mind that my limbs are always there... quite a challenge D:.

As for the glowing I can't do colors right now so its all gotta be with pencil and lines. Gotta make it work without the glowing or colors

[Runemist34]

Well, black and white is kind of my pet-medium, so I'd say it's totally possible!
Also: Another way to show the fire as "glowing" but not actually have it glowing with colour or whatever...fire's a light source, so have all the other shadows moving away from it! That would help with the idea that it is, in fact, fire. :)

[PurpleVeggie]

EEEEEEEE one piece!!!

I've seen some great Ace and Aokiji fan art by e1n on deviant art with excellent effects, you should go check out his stuff if you haven't already. I don't have any pro advice to give you, just try to copy stuff like that till you get it yourself.

[AMZinthos]

This is my attempt to draw ice so far. Doesn't look too bad I'm having more trouble with anatomy at this point, I never get the shape of my head right  :-[ .  Not too worried about fire for now was mostly going for ice... Now I'm not sure I wanna finish this drawing maybe come back later but meh the proportion of the arms and head takes away my motivation or something  :-X