Sketchbook Update

I’m a strong believer in keeping a daily sketchbook.

I’m also a hypocrite. I often go days or weeks without cracking mine open.

Don’t get me wrong. I do a lot of drawing but the overwhelming bulk of my artwork is created for clients with strict guidelines and objectives that have to be met. Between commissioned work and the never ending slog of running a freelance business (emails, phone calls, bookkeeping, self-promotion, writing proposals, running errands, keeping a blog, etc.) its getting harder and harder for me to curl up with a blank page and sketch for my own study and enjoyment. Lately I’ve been feeling a bit like a professional athlete who plays hard during the actual games but then never has time to exercise or come to practice.

As a result I’ve started to feel a bit stale in my artistic development. I’m catching myself falling back on reliable tricks and habits rather than pushing myself to learn and grow. That’s a slippery slope towards creative death. So lately I’ve been forcing myself to get back into it and crack open the ol’ sketchbook more regularly. My goal is to do a page a day. Some days I make it, many I still don’t, but I’m determined to keep pushing ahead.

Most of my sketchbook drawings are not very cartoony. In order to be a good cartoonists I believe you first have to understand how to draw realistically. You have to have a solid grasp the real thing before you can convincingly simplify and caricature it. So when I sketch I usually study real people, real poses, real clothing, etc.

I also do a lot of very bad drawings (though I don’t have the courage to show them here). You can’t grow and improve without making mistakes and my sketchbook is the one place where I give myself total permission to mess up royally. If all my sketchbook drawings were perfect it would only mean that I was drawing things I’ve already mastered. That’s a great way to get stale fast.

Here’s a few recent sketches. Nothing in this particular batch is from life—all are from photos or video stills.

NCS Cartooning Recap

This past weekend I was in Omaha for a two-day cartooning event sponsored by the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society (of which I am a member). The schedule was jam-packed and the public was treated to a fountain of cartoon goodies including a special headline event that kicked off the weekend: a presentation by Pixar story artist Josh Cooley. Josh has done work on The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Up, and wrote the humorous “UPisodes” used in Up’s promotion.

Josh gave his presentation on Friday night to a large crowd at the Kaneko Center. (I’d love to show pictures but photography was not allowed.) Using slides and video he gave us a detailed peek behind the curtain at the story department at Pixar. He explained what the job of a story artist is, showed us some slides of the Pixar facilities (including what looked like an olympic-sized swimming pool, a fully-stocked cereal bar, daily drawing classes, even fencing lessons!), and talked about the long and winding journey that a Pixar film takes from the first kernel of an idea to finished script. We were also treated to animatics of abandoned sequences from Up and Ratatouille—including one very funny bit with a manic lab rat character that was later dropped.

Saturday morning Josh gave a closed-door workshop on storytelling. Being a filmmaking geek and a huge animation fan I ate it up. Then on Saturday afternoon there were three panel presentations given by midwest NCS members:

“Cartooning In The New Economy” – First came a discussion on some of the challenges currently facing artists in the gag cartoon biz. Cartoonists Ed Fischer, Tom Kerr, Bucky Jones, and Dave Carpenter answered a series of questions from moderator and syndicated cartoonist John Hambrock (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee).

“Drawing in the House of Saddam” – Next up were cartoonists Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) and Tom Richmond (MAD Magazine). They showed slides from their recent USO trips to Germany and Iraq. When they weren’t cheering up wounded troops in the hospital they were touring the ruins from the Iraq war including a former palace of Saddam Hussein.

“Sketching As Story”– The afternoon closed with another panel discussion featuring cartoonist/storyboard artist Glenn McCoy (The Flying McCoys, Ice Age 3, Despicable Me), Chris Browne (Hagar the Horrible), yours truly, and Pixar’s Josh Cooley (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up), moderated by editorial cartoonist Jeff Koterba. We showed slides of our work and answered a few audience questions about visual storytelling.

Chris Browne, Cedric Hohnstadt

After our panel I asked Hagar the Horrible artist Chris Browne for a photo. He said he would but only if I wore his viking helmet. It’s a special piece of papier-mâché headgear hand made by Chris himself using scraps of leftover drawing paper from his studio. As a kid I have fond memories of visiting my Grandma, curling up on the couch, and reading “Hagar the Horrible” in her newspaper whenever we visited. Now here I was sitting next to the Hagar artist on stage and wearing his home-made Hagar hat. Of course Chris took over the strip after his father’s death so technically he wasn’t the one who drew most of the strips I read growing up but to me that’s a minor detail. It was still quite a treat!

Cedric Hohnstadt with Pixar story artist Josh Cooley

Pixar’s Josh Cooley is a super nice guy and was incredibly generous with his time and talent. In addition to three presentations on stage he also did interviews, signed posters, and ate his meals with our crazy group of cartoonists, most of whom were huge Pixar fans. For two days we bombarded him with geeky question after geeky question and he graciously answered them all.

After the final panel we made our way down the block to the Bemis Gallery for the opening of a special traveling exhibit, “One Fine Sunday in the Funny Pages”. The exhibit featured dozens of original drawings—one from almost every syndicated cartoon strip that you would find in your daily newspaper. The exhibit was put together by John Read, who is also the publisher of the wonderful cartooning magazine “Stay Tooned!”.

During the exhibit several cartoonists hung around for a book signing. Pictured front to back: Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues), Chris Browne (Hagar the Horrible), Glenn McCoy (The Flying McCoys), John Hambrock (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee), and Jeff Koterba (signing his memoir Inklings which is getting rave reviews).

What an inspiring weekend! Besides spending time with such inspiring and insanely talented people, Omaha was a charming town and the weather was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for more. I’m still riding high off the cartooning buzz and more excited than ever to keep drawing!

Walt Stanchfield’s “Drawn To Life”

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For twenty years Walt Stanchfield was a drawing instructor at Disney, teaching and inspiring some of the worlds’ best artists and animators to help them hone their craft. He often gave his students handouts filled with inspiring sketches and valuable insights into the process of gesture drawing. The handouts were so popular that they were photocopied and traded like baseball cards. Several of them have also popped up here and there on the internet. (A few years ago I downloaded a batch from a website which unfortunately no longer makes them available.)

Academy Award® nominated producer Don Hahn (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) has collected those notes and edited them into a brand new two-volume set entitled Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures. The books will be available in late March/early April but are currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com (Volume 1 and Volume 2). The books total 800 pages of inspiration and instruction so at $20 each it’s a steal.

You can view a short video “trailer” for the books at www.donhahn.com.

Shameless Plug: Recommended Resources

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It’s been a while so I thought I’d take a minute to shamelessly plug my website store. I plug a lot of stuff so there should be something of interest to everyone.

First, you can download The Best of Head Hunting, a PDF containing over 100 of the best portrait and cartoon sketches from my two previously published sketchbooks. Includes a bonus screen saver made from the art.

Second, I’ve linked to a few of the books and products I’ve illustrated that are now available on Amazon.com.

Third—and this is the biggie—I’ve linked to an Amazon.com store called “Cedric Hohnstadt Recommends”. Dozens and dozens of carfeully-selected books, dvd’s, and other resources for artists, sorted by category. I’ve only included products that I think are really great. You don’t pay any extra by ordering them through my store, but in full disclosure Amazon.com tosses a few coins my way with each order for the referral.

Check out the Cedric Hohnstadt Illustration store here.

Kyle Baker’s “How To Draw Stupid”

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I recently ordered a copy of Kyle Baker’s new book How To Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning (Amazon.com link). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Baker’s work, he’s a prolific cartoonist with a background in comic books and animation. His work has appeared in numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, MAD Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He’s written and/or illustrated at least seven graphic novels and self-published three book collections of his cartoons (Kyle Baker Cartoonist Volumes 1 & 2, and Undercover Genie). For samples of his work check out Baker’s website, kylebaker.com.

How To Draw Stupid is not your average how-to book on cartooning. Baker assumes you already knows how to draw. Instead of teaching a non-cartoonist how to become a cartoonist, his goal is to teach the cartoonist how to be a great cartoonist. He fills the pages with insights and examples that flesh out his personal approach to cartooning. Given Baker’s long and prolific career he has a great deal of valuable information to share. He offers pearls of artistic wisdom on such topics as character design, using reference material, expressive poses, acting, and communicating clearly, just to name a few.

The chapters are short, to-the-point, and richly illustrated with clear examples from Baker’s past work. The text is a bit skimpy in spots but not lacking in content. Baker has a style of writing that is low on fluff and gets straight to the point. Like many of his cartoons, Baker says a lot with a little. The entire 112-page book can be read in less than an afternoon, but there’s so much great information that you’ll want to pull it off your shelf to read again and again.

There are a few chapters where I wished Baker would have delved a bit deeper. There are times when he made a great point but left me wanting more specifics. But those were the exception, not the rule. Overall I was very happy with the book. I found myself underlining quite a few well-said statements, and by the time I finished reading I was anxious to to grab my sketchbook and start applying what I had just read. Even though I’ve been earning a living as an artist for eleven years I still learned a few things.

I’m happy to recommend Kyle Baker’s How To Draw Stupid. It’s a book that every serious cartoonist will find helpful and inspiring. Order a copy today.

Indiana Jones and the Sketchbook of Doom

Lately I’ve been blessed with gobs of freelance work, but one of the downsides is that I’m so busy cranking out work for clients that my sketchbook has been gathering dust.

Not a good thing.

A sketchbook is an important part of any artist’s development, no matter how busy or successful he/she gets. The sketchbook is the one place where you can really let loose, try new things, experiment, and (most importantly) make lots and lots of bad drawings.

When I say “bad drawings” I don’t mean getting lazy or not caring about your work. I mean bad in a good way. For most artists the temptation is to try and fill your sketchbook with beautiful artwork, but that can be a mistake. If your drawings are all wonderful, it means you are only drawing things you’ve already mastered. And that means you aren’t improving, growing, and pushing yourself to get better. It just means you are going back and forth along a well-worn rut. The day you stop doing bad drawings is the day you stop challenging yourself, and as a result you stop growing and improving.

And if you aren’t growing, you start sliding backwards. There is no middle ground.

Most of the work I do for clients is very cartoony, which is loose and fun and has no rules. Some people think that cartooning is really just sophisticated doodling, and I suppose for some artists it is. The way my brain works, I have to first study something and understand how it works in the real world before I can effectively simplify it into an appealing cartoon design. So I don’t use my sketchbook much to practice cartooning. I try to fill the pages with realistic and semi-realistic subject matter (portraits, caricatures, life drawing, clothing studies, etc.) The better I get at drawing realistically, the better I get at cartooning. As the old saying goes, you have to understand the rules before you can break them.

Recently I took my sketchbook with me on a vacation to a lake cabin in Wisconsin. I also brought along a fun book called The Complete Making of Indiana Jones (Amazon.com link). It’s a thick paperback full of behind-the-scenes photos and stories from all four Indiana Jones films. These sketches were done from that book. These are clearly not my best sketches, but I learned a lot doing them so they have value. I experimented a bit with different mediums, brushed up on some anatomy and cloth, and was once again reminded that Harrison Ford has a really hard face to draw (especially the young Harrison). There’s a reason there aren’t too many caricatures of him floating around out there.

Someday, if I get the courage, I’ll post some of my really bad sketchbook drawings. But you get the idea.

Now get out there and fill up that sketchbook!