Thoughts on Life Drawing

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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. Read More

Review: Stephen Silver’s “Life”

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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. Read More

Re-Post: Free Drawing Lessons

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Here’s an old blog post from 2005. My blog audience has grown since then so I thought it was worth re-posting:

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(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 70 different notes and handouts from Stanchfield’s classes. Though they are geared more for the advanced artist than the beginner, there’s enough valuable information to benefit anyone who has a serious interest in drawing the human form. Enjoy!

(If you print them out, have a lot of paper on hand. I think the entire set of notes takes up about 200 pages).

EDIT: Yikes! I just checked the site and the PDF files are no longer available for download. My apologies. As best I can tell, the handouts are being compiled into a book that should be available soon. Oh well. Check out the rest of the Animation Meat site, there’s some great stuff there.

Perspective “Cheat Sheets” for Comic Book Artists

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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. When I was in art school, I knew more than a few art students who wore berets only to cover the bald patches in their scalps that resulted from them pulling their hair out every time they tried to draw something in perspective.

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Artist David Chelsea wrote a book called Perspective! For Comic Book Artists that I’ve found to be helpful. In addition to explaining the concepts of the vanishing point, one-point perspective, two-point perspective, three-point perspective, and foreshortening, the book includes some great “cheat sheets” in the back. Chelsea has gone to the trouble of drawing seven detailed diagrams for artists to use when figuring out the perspective of, say, a series of skyscrapers or the interior of a room. There are two charts each for one-, two-, and three-point perspective, and one chart that shows a series of circles receding into the background. These diagrams alone are worth the price of the book.

Being a busy freelancer with tight deadlines, on more than one occasion I’ve used the diagrams to give me fast and accurate perspective. In my pre-computer days I enlarged each diagram onto an 11×17 sheet of paper and taped it onto my light table, then taped my drawing over the top. Now that I draw digitally, I’ve scanned each diagram into Photoshop and when I need them I just paste them into my drawing, enlarging/cropping them as needed. Then I sketch over them on another layer.

If you do a lot of perspective drawing, especially with crazy camera angles, seven perspective charts may not be enough to cover all your needs. But if you only draw in perspective occasionally, they can be a terrific time saver. You can buy Perspective! for Comic Book Artists at Amazon.com.

Sketchbook Update

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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 some of my better warm-up sketches as of late.

I wish I could say these were all done from life (that is, after all, the best way to draw). However, my crazy schedule hasn’t allowed for me to leave the studio just to sketch. Most of these were done from photos. I keep a file of interesting faces and poses that I find in books and magazines, solely so that I can sketch them later. I also get a lot of good images by typing crazy terms into Google image search.

Schoolism.com: Memory Sketching

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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 crowd to draw. Before you pick up your pencil, spend a few moments studying everything about them (their clothing, their posture, their face, the way they do their hair, their height….everything). Don’t look at them for longer than one or two minutes. If they haven’t walked away by then, turn and face the other direction.

Now, close your eyes and continue to study them in your mind. Analyze as much as you can remember. What was that hairstyle again? How far apart were the eyes? What color were the shoes? What was with that funny walk? (Don’t peek. It will completely destroy the purpose of the exercise.)

Finally, when you’ve got your target burned into your brain and you’ve thought everything through, THEN pick up your pencil to draw. And again, no peeking.

This was my first attempt at memory sketching. This guy was helping to take down a small stage in the Mall of America east court. Once I started to draw, I suddenly realized how little I had actually noticed about him. I had to improvise a lot of the details. Memory sketching is HARD.

But that’s why it’s such a great exercise. It forces you to really work your observational muscles for faster and more accurate drawing. It will also help fill your memory bank with facial features, hairstyles, body types, etc. so that you have more to draw on when you have to design a character from scratch. Personally, I’ve noticed that I have a clearer memory of this guy than I do of most other people I’ve drawn.

To see sample memory sketches from other artists, check out these two blogs: SketchClub and Sketchcub East.

Two Reminders…

This weekend is FallCon, Minnesota’s largest comic book convention. Here’s a recent post about it, and here’s the official site. I’ll have a table to display some of my work and sell a few sketches. If you are in the Twin Cities area, stop by and say hi!

Also, don’t forget to watch the season premiere of 3-2-1 Penguins! tomorrow morning on NBC! (I’m a character designer on the show). It airs at 10:30am central time. Check your local listings.