Art Journal 022: Firearms

I was thinking about what I could write about for this next article and I thought about machines, since that’s a sort of thing people tend to have trouble drawing. The first machine I thought about was firearms, and then I started breaking the article apart in my head: classical handguns, modern firearms, so on and so forth; different mechanical functions for different points in time and different scales of firearms. I was also going to write about cars but the more I thought about it there’s enough different ways that guns work that I could write a whole thing about them and focus on cars as a separate machine later.  Guns are something my comic is quite full of; the best way to get better at drawing a machine is to understand how the parts of the whole fit together to make it work, so here’s a little breakdown about how I handle the different styles that exist.  For simplicity’s sake I’ve condensed them into five groups: classic handguns, modern handguns, classic rifles, modern rifles and antiques. Here’s the cliff’s notes: it’s all just boxes and cylinders.

The first type of firearm we’ll look at is a very simple, timeless design that appears in a wide range of story settings ranging from the wild west through the gilded age, the prohibition era, a whole bunch of wars to today and even the future!  Revolvers are extremely simple and therefore extremely reliable firearms which is why they’re still regularly used today in spite of more modern engineering producing different types of handguns.  Drawing a revolver is just as simple as the mechanism itself, though it’s still very easy to screw up.  A revolver is basically a big cylinder with a ring of holes you put cartridges into, and that cylinder sits in the middle of a thin rectangle with another, longer cylinder attached to the front, even with the top of the big cylinder in the middle (A I).  In a more complex view (A II), a revolver functions like this:  inside the back of the big rectangle there’s a pin, and behind that pin is a hammer.  When the hammer is cocked back a gear rotates the cylinder with all the bullets in it to bring the next one in order up to the top. When the trigger is pulled the hammer is released, it strikes the back of the pin which in turn strikes the back of the bullet which -in turn- ignites the gunpowder which turns to rapidly-expanding gas which pushes the bullet down the barrel directly in front of it and flies forward, into something. When the hammer is cocked back the cylinder rotates again and the next shot is ready to fire.  

The basic function of a revolver is a cylinder rotates around its axis mounted inside of a rectangle, so if you can draw that you can draw revolvers! That central axis often has a function of its own: some types of revolvers have a bracket shape that flips out 90 degrees to the side so you can load the cylinder. If you press inward on the pin-looking part on the front of the cylinder then the part on the other end, which looks like a starburst (A III), pushes all the cartridges out of the revolver all at once so you can put more in there. That’s what that thing does.  Some older-style revolvers, like some of the ones you’d find from cowboy eras, had a little secondary cylinder alongside the barrel with a lever (A IV); this pushed a rod backwards into one of the main cylinder holes and push the empty cartridges out that way so if you see one of those, that’s what that one does, and is the reason why it’s positioned offcenter from the barrel.  Revolvers employ a timeless mechanism which is too simple for much to actually go wrong with it, which is why they’re regarded as being so reliable, but also because they use so few moving parts they’re generally able to handle much more powerful rounds, like your Dirty Harry or your gigantic Bear-Stoppers.  And even though they’re very basic they come in many shapes and sizes (A V), from mid-length barrels on old cowboy repeaters to a detective’s snubnose- meant to be tiny and concealable with no corners to snag on clothing, and an internalized hammer- to a more modern long-barrel gigantic revolver.  Aside from the caliber of a cartridge two other things determine the recoil of a firearm: the length of the barrel and the weight of the gun. Short-barrel revolvers will snap more and hurt more than long heavy-barrel revolvers firing the same caliber.  I keep using the word “simple” but revolvers are just so simple and timeless that if you need to draw a handgun you can probably use a revolver, and it’ll be no sweat to draw!  Just remember to put the cylinder inside the big rectangle, and not just free-floating over the user’s fist by itself with a barrel attached.  That doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Revolvers are the go-to handgun for many artists, and for good reason, because when you start exploring modern handguns things get a bit more tricky.  More formally known as semiautomatics (named because they only fire and load one bullet at a time), the modern handgun uses the same fundamental bits as a revolver- namely a trigger releases a hammer which strikes a pin, which pokes the back of a bullet and causes the powder to light up and shove a bullet out the front of a tube- but does it in a totally unique way.  The way a semiauto is constructed is basically blocks on top of blocks, arranged so one block can slide over another (B I). Round-bottomed long-and-narrow rectangles nested inside tracks with a block-looking grip attached near the back and a hole in the front, that’s the basics of drawing a semiautomatic pistol.

Semis are a lot of fun to draw if your story calls for people shooting bullets at things, but if you want to get the most out of them you’re gonna have to know the specifics of how they work moreso than you would with a revolver, because their entire shape and physical appearance hinges on the specific way a semiauto fires and loads cartridges.  So here’s how they work (B II): The chamber where a cartridge sits is the block attached to the back of the barrel, which sits inside the slide, which is the prominent top-most rectangle of the handgun. Inside the slide is the bits that control the firing pin, and when the trigger is pulled a hammer at the back will strike the pin and fire the gun all the same, but instead of the user cocking the hammer to load the next bullet, what happens is the act of discharging the bullet produces an equal-and-opposite force going the other way- which we know as recoil- which also forces the slide on its track backwards. There’s a little hook in the slide so when the bullet is fired and physics forces the slide backwards, the hook pulls the spent shell out of the chamber and throws it out a hole in the side.  Meanwhile, at the lower front end of the gun, a spring is being compressed by the backwards movement of the slide. Once the rearward force dissipates the tension of the spring wins out and it pushes the slide forward again.  When the slide is pushed forward another little hook inside it will push a fresh bullet off the top of the magazine up a ramp and into the now-empty chamber, and when it returns to its forward neutral state it reveals that, in the act of being thrown backwards, the slide cocked the hammer back, so it’s ready for the user to pull the trigger, release it and repeat the cycle all over again.  By automatically clearing and preparing itself to fire again a semiauto can fire many bullets quickly and easily.  When it’s empty the slide will often stay locked in the rear position (B III), exposing both the barrel and, sometimes, the arm of the spring (that’s the second thing sticking out when you see a semi in this state).  When the empty magazine is replaced with a fresh one the user can press a little lever on the side to release the lock holding the slide back, it’ll snap forward, skim a bullet off the top of the magazine (which sits inside the grip) and stuff it in the chamber.  Simple as that! So many more moving parts is also a reason why semis tend to jam- whether its a bullet going off-track and jamming on a reload or an empty shell getting stuck in the slide instead of flying out, since the machine is loading and unloading as well as firing those are two additional points of failure for the weapon to experience: they’re quick and high-capacity but more prone to jams than the spinning wheel of a revolver.

So if you’re drawing a semiautomatic you want to remember to draw blocks sliding backwards on tracks with cylinders hidden inside of them!  Semiautomatics can take many shapes, just like revolvers! (B IV).  Lizzie carries a semiautomatic with a flashlight attached to a small rail at the front of the lower part of the frame.  Hers has a hammer at the back and a thumb-safety at the rear of the slide to lock the firing pin and keep it from going off.  Monday carries a pair of semis with a low profile and no hammer in the back- it uses a different internal mechanism to release the firing pin, but it still uses the same spring-and-slide “blowback” function to fire and load new cartridges.  Semiautos can come in very small pocket sizes too, although those are limited in power and capacity.  

The classic rifle is a wild-western staple.  For when you need to shoot something really far away, you need a nice long barrel with a stock to rest comfortably against your shoulder.  There are a couple ways these old-style rifles used to work but they’re really similar so instead of just picking one or another I decided to write about both. 

A rifle is really not too different from a revolver in its construction (C I): there’s a rectangle with a long cylinder stuck to the front, and a wooden block at the other side.  The key differences are that there’s no big cylinder in the middle and the rifle usually has a wooden triangle at the back to rest your shoulder against, as well as wood under the barrel so you can hold it and not burn your hands on hot metal.  An overarching theme of drawing guns is that there’s a central box where all the important stuff happens and then tubes coming out the front and a block you hold onto.  Remember this and your gun-drawing troubles will be over.

Alright, now into detail.  The two major types of classic rifles are Lever-Action and Bolt-Action rifles.  The lever-action rifle is a classic cowboy gun (C II).  The central box has a lever at the bottom, where the non-trigger fingers go inside the larger loop and you pull it out and in again to cycle out one spent shell and load a fresh one- Arnold uses one of these in Terminator 2 except he twirls it around one-handed to reload it.  Unlike a revolver or semiautomatic, the magazine for a lever-action rifle is the second lower tube underneath the barrel- usually there’s a slot on the side or underneath that you feed cartridges into and they stack nose-to-tail inside that lower tube, feeding backwards into the central box to be loaded up into the upper chamber- that’s what the second tube on the bottom of these types of rifles are for!  A section of wood is usually attached to the middle of these with some metal bands so you have something to hold with your forehand.  Drawing these guns is as simple as putting two bars on the side of a brick!

The other type of classic rifle you may have seen a lot of is the bolt-action rifle (C III), a type of action developed to make it easier for shooters laying on their bellies to fire and cycle their weapons, since there’s no downward movement to jam into the ground like a lever-action rifle has.  This is honestly as simple as a firearm can get, since their entire functioning parts consist of the trigger, barrel, central brick and a bolt- you lift the bolt up and pull it back to eject a spent cartridge and- if it has one- load a new round from an internal magazine inside the box.  Otherwise you would just put a fresh cartridge in the chamber yourself, push the bolt forward and swing the arm down into the locked position.  The firing pin is now primed and you just squeeze the trigger to fire!  Because there are so few moving parts there is very little to go wrong, and because nothing actually moves around these make for remarkably accurate rifles- many sniper rifles you see in films are bolt-action rifles.  Drawing these is super duper easy, it’s just a box with a long tube inside a piece of wood.

Classic firearm mechanisms, like classic handguns, are still in use today.  The pump-action shotgun uses basically the same exact construction as these old guns, with a magazine tube underneath a barrel, only everything is scaled up to accommodate cartridges the size of your thumb (C IV).  One other type of way a shotgun works is the “break-action”, which is actually the simplest way a gun can work but it’s more complicated to actually draw because there’s no actual box, it’s two cylinders side-by-side on an articulated hinge which connects the rear of the cylinders flush against a curvy thing which you hold onto (C V), so they’re more tedious to draw even if their mechanical function is as close to a tube, nail and elastic band as you can legally get.

If you’ve played a first-person shooter in the past decade you’re probably well-acquainted with modern rifle firearm designs (D I).  These pains in the ass are less elegant than their predecessors and have a whole bunch of little features on their exterior.  While they sorta do adhere to the “box with a cylinder” method of construction the arrangement of their specific parts are usually cramped and alternate frequently between blocks and cones, some merged into one another.  Visual reference is a godsend for these rifles.

Okay so here’s how these guys work (D II): they’re similar to but different from the semiautomatic pistol.  A big magazine goes in the magazine hole and the act of pulling the trigger both clears the chamber and loads a fresh bullet, but it isn’t the recoil of the gun that causes it to cycle.  Many modern firearms use whats called a “gas blowback” system to cycle the action- what this means is that when gunpowder is ignited and expanding hot gas pushes the bullet out of the gun a little tube attached to the barrel will tap into that expanding gas and redirect some of it backwards to push the internal “slide” of the rifle backwards to make it do all the things a semiautomatic pistol does.  Many modern AR-style rifles’ gas tubes are concealed inside the familiar big plastic front grip but it’s there all the same.  The gas tube is a prominent feature in the silhouette of AK-style rifles (D III), and the majority of other modern firearms are built around either one or the other of these two patterns, so if you know the two of them you know most modern military firearm designs.  Just for funsies, an extreme example of a complicated modern rifle I used in my comic is the M60 light machinegun (D IV).  Instead of feeding rounds in from a magazine it used a belt of bullets connected with little tin clips- you can see the gas tube underneath, behind the bipod at the front.  These are gigantic slabs of metal designed to churn out as much firepower as possible and their visual construction is the epitome of “blocks and cylinders mashed into one another”.  I figured I would mention this one as an outlier.

The common theme for drawing firearms is definitely “box with tube on the front”, but the advent of the box wasn’t until the 19th century, so what happens if you wanted to draw a firearm from antiquity?  Well there’s good news and bad news on that front:  The good news is that 95% of the gun is just long tube and wood stock, which is all remarkably easy to draw.  The bad news is the other 5%.  In the recent end of antique firearm history we had what are called flintlocks (E I). The way these worked was you had a small pan you would pour a bit of priming powder into and when you pulled the trigger the “hammer”- which was a vice holding a piece of literal flint- would strike against a curved steel face to create a spark to throw onto the pan of primer which would ignite the powder and fire your musketball or whatever.  Both parts of the flintlock moved when you pulled the trigger to make sure the spark it throwed landed in the primer, so depending on how detail-oriented you are these could be a breeze to fake or a pain to get just right.  Further back in history we have matchlocks (E II), which were a similar concept except the hammer was a hook holding a piece of slow-burning fuse cord you had to light with actual fire, and it would touch the fuse to the primer pan to fire the gun.  The flintlock’s most distinct advantage over the matchlock was it could fire in the rain and didn’t need to be lit before a battle.  And as one last example of firearm design we have a Japanese-style matchlock (E III).  There are basic similarities between the Japanese design and familiar Western ones but one key difference was the use of a ball-style trigger instead of the hook-style we commonly associate with firearms. They’re very beautiful designs and definitely worth looking up, even if you don’t plan to draw one.

So that’s a short overview for if not to actually draw specific guns, for how to fake it well enough that it’ll make sense.  They can be pretty tricky but in my own head the way that makes the most sense for explaining them is to know how they actually work, so you know which parts do what and what to keep an eye out for.  You don’t have to get it exactly right but you can land it close enough to the real thing that people will understand that these lines represent the idea of a thing which spins or slides, and if you can fake that then you’ll do just fine drawing these loud little machines.