drawing Tag

30 Apr

Posted at 11:22h in Uncategorized
The human form is one of the hardest things for an artist to master. It is incredibly complex—the hundreds of bones and muscles in the body can twist and pull into an infinite combination of expressive poses. In addition, people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It's important for an artist to study different body types so he can convincingly illustrate characters with variety and personality The best way to master the human form is simply to draw it...again and again and again. To keep my skills from getting dull I regularly attend drawing co-ops in my city (a co-op is simply a group of artists getting together to draw real live models). Although I'm a cartoonist, I consider life drawing to be one of the most important and helpful exercises I can do. The more I understand the human form, the easier it is for me to simplify and exaggerate it with cartooning. It's hard to understate the value of drawing from life. Photographs can be helpful, and there are some good reference books out there for artists. But because photos are 2D they tend to flatten the form. Also, because a photograph is permanently frozen it can suck some of the life out of a pose. For the serious artist, nothing beats the freshness and energy of drawing from a live model. Drawing from a photo is like eating reheated leftovers rather than fresh food hot off the stove. However, as much as I believe in it there's one part of the life drawing tradition I've never understood.

06 Mar

Posted at 00:00h in Character Design
life.jpg Yesterday I received my copy of Stephen Silver's latest art book, Life. For those who don't know, Silver is an amazing animation character designer whose credits include Disney's Kim Possible and Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom. He's a versatile artist and I find his work very inspiring. Silver also teaches an online Character Design course through Schoolism.com. I took the course last year and I learned a ton. It's expensive but well worth the investment for anyone serious about character design. Silver has published several popular sketchbooks in the past, each one jam-packed with his amazing drawings.

24 Jan

Posted at 00:00h in Uncategorized

Here's an old blog post from 2005. My blog audience has grown since then so I thought it was worth re-posting: (Sketches by Pixar artist Tom Gately) Walt Stanchfield started as a Disney clean-up artist in the 60's, and by the 1990's he had become one of Disney's premiere drawing instructors. Now, thanks to the folks at Animation Meat you can download...

27 Dec

Posted at 00:00h in Illustration

One of the wonderful things about drawing is that it allows you to create the illusion of a three-dimensional space on a flat, two-dimensonal piece of paper. But pulling this off is not as easy as it looks. It is not uncommon for artists to struggle when attempting to create a convincing sense of depth (or "perspective") in a drawing....

19 Oct

Posted at 00:00h in Uncategorized

Lately I've been trying to discipline myself to fill a page a day in my sketchbook, usually first thing in the morning as a warm-up. I'm not a morning person so this is a good way for me to clear the morning fog out of my brain. So far I've managed it about once every 2-3 days. This page combines...

05 Oct

Posted at 00:00h in Character Design

Yesterday I covered part 1 of my latest schoolism.com assignment (my instructor is Stephen Silver). Part 2 was to do a memory sketch. "Memory sketching" is an exercise designed to strengthen your observation muscles. It works like this: Go to a place where there are a lot of people (i.e. a mall, airport, coffee shop, etc.). Choose someone in the...