Last Chance To Back The Pose Drawing Sparkbook On Kickstarter

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MAINIMAGE16-forwebsite-FINAL48This is it! The home stretch! As I write this there are only 30 hours left to back the Pose Drawing Sparkbook on Kickstarter. I’m excited to say the project has been a success – 100% funded with over 450 backers and counting – and we’ve been pushing forward through some fun stretch goals.

I really the Sparkbook will be a big help to a lot of artists who want to learn to put more life and personality into their drawings. The more backers we get, the more stretch goals we reach, the better we can make this thing! Jump on board!

If you’d rather not be a backer, would you consider helping spread the word? Just paste this into your favorite social media:

Last chance to back the Pose Drawing Sparkbook on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/12K2otL

Thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support. It means a lot!

 

Sparkbook Snippet: Acting With The Entire Body

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(This excerpt is from the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, a super-charged sketchbook designed to help you put more life and personality into your drawings. Think of it as acting exercises for your sketchbook.Read other snippets here and here.)

Don’t limit your acting to just the face and hands. The head makes up less than ten percent of a person’s body. You’ve got another ninety percent of your character to work with. Don’t let it go to waste! Is your character crying? Don’t just add a tear; hunch the back, droop the shoulders and bend the knees. Is your character feeling joyful? Don’t just smile; arch the back, raise the arms, and get those toes a-dancin’.

As an example, let’s travel back in time to the year 1800. Two southern gentlemen are having an argument. Insults fly and tempers flare until finally one of them shouts in a furious rage, “I challenge you to a duel!” How might you draw that pose?

Duel-1

This first attempt is generic and boring. There’s nothing special about it. Other than the facial expression, it tells us almost nothing about what the character is feeling. To illustrate, look at what happens when I simply change the eyebrows:

Duel-2

Suddenly it turns from an active, angry pose to a passive, worried pose. One subtle difference has completely changed the pose’s meaning. Why? Because the pose was weak and generic to begin with.

Here’s the same emotion with poses that use the entire body. Notice how much more clearly the attitude reads:

AngryPoses2

Here’s another example of the power of body language. I’ve purposely left the faces blank to show how much you can say with just a pose.

Poses-NoExpression-Layout2

Before you get caught up in a detailed drawing, start by simply roughing in the pose. Use stick figures if necessary. If the pose doesn’t read clearly at the beginning, no amount of detail will fix it later.

Read two more Sparkbook Snippets: “Action Reveals Character” and “Personality and Emotions”. The Pose Drawing Sparkbook is now available for pre-order. Also, don’t forget to download your free list of 100 Sketchbook Ideas as my gift to you.

Why Every Artist Needs To See “The Artist”

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The Artist

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

Tonight I saw “The Artist”, a feature film getting a lot of buzz. It just won three Golden Globe including best film (musical or comedy) and some say it deserves an Oscar for Best Picture. I wouldn’t quite go that far but it is a very good film.

What’s makes “The Artist” especially remarkable is that it’s a black and white silent film. The soundtrack consists almost entirely of music and sound effects. On the rare occasion when characters do speak their dialogue is written out on old-timey title cards, just like a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton film. I know that sounds awful but trust me, it works. In a way the absence of dialogue actually improves the film because all of the other storytelling devices have to work harder to pick up the slack. The actions have to be clearer, the acting more expressive, the editing sharper, and being forced to say everything with pictures alone makes for some very creative and compelling visuals.

As an illustrator I found “The Artist” to be a powerful reminder that a tremendous amount can be said simply and elegantly with pictures alone. The right poses, expressions, and body language can communicate great depth and feeling without saying a single word. The movie really inspired me to think more deeply about the power of my drawings to communicate, entertain, and even to move people. The next time I sit down to draw the film will still be reverberating in my mind, challenging me to think harder about how I can say more with my drawings.

If, like me, you make your living drawing pictures then you absolutely must see this film. Study it. Replay it in your mind. Especially if you work in storyboards, comics, animation, or other storytelling mediums.

Here’s the official trailer:

[youtube_sc url=OK7pfLlsUQM width=450]

See You At The Expo!

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Tonight I’m flying to California for the CTN Animation Expo. Can’t wait! Before I leave I wanted to post a few items of interest:

1. Update on my freelancing presentation.

I’ll be giving a talk at the Expo on Saturday, November 19, 4:30pm, called “Be Your Own Boss: Freelancing Tips and Tricks”. In an earlier blog post I said the talk would be 30 minutes. It will actually be an hour and fifteen minutes. Tickets to my talk are sold out but I’m told that when my presentation is over I can move everyone over to another room in the building (not sure which one yet) for an ongoing Q&A. If you weren’t able to get a seat at my talk you can still catch the Q&A. Just wait around outside the Exec Boardoom at around 5:45pm so you can join us as we file out.

2. Check out Stephen Silver’s new “Posebook” app.

Speaking of the CTN Expo, the amazing character designer Stephen Silver will have a booth there again this year. He’s got a new project that I think is pretty neat: He’s creating a new series of iPhone/iPad app for artists called Posebook. It’s a collection of professional costumed models in over 2,000 full-body poses (no nudes), hands, and close-up facial expressions for sketching. There’s also 6 instructional videos included as well as 25 sketches from some top character designers in the biz. That’s a lot of goodies for $9.99.

The first volume, “Males”, has just been released on iTunes. The second volume, “Females”, is coming soon. I recently downloaded the app and can’t wait to give it a try. Once the dust settles around here I plan to post a review along with a sketch or two. But from what I can tell so far it’s a great product.

 

3. I’m being interviewed on “On The Box”.

Several years ago I illustrated a cartoon Gospel tract for the ministry of Living Waters which has consistently been one of their best sellers – over 5 million copies have been printed in English and it has been translated into 20 languages. Last year, with the help of some talented animators I produced an animated version of the tract which to date has had over 300,000 hits on YouTube.

While I’m in California Living Waters has graciously invited me  to do a short video interview on their webcast, “On The Box”. It will air live on Thursday, November 17 (11:30am Pacific) and then be uploaded to their YouTube channel for future viewing.

Gotta go pack my bags. I’ll be back in the studio on Monday, November 21.

March is Sketchbook Month

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Sketchbook

Well, not officially. But it will be on this here blog. At least for this year.

Care to join me?

Life has been crazy busy lately with no signs of anything slowing down. As a result it’s been a real struggle to keep anything resembling a regular sketchbook. I still draw quite a bit but its always to please a client and meet a deadline. Rarely am I able to draw something I *choose* to draw for practice, to push myself, or just give myself a creative breather. As I’ve said before, I feel kind of a like a professional athlete who plays hard at every game but then never has time to come to practice.

Character designer Stephen Silver does absolutely brilliant work and one reason is that he’s a ferocious sketcher. He’s fond of saying, “A page a day keeps the competition away.” So that’s my goal for March. Do a page a day for an entire month. (To make it more manageable I’m going to limit myself to weekdays only, otherwise I might get discouraged and fall off the wagon.)

As an extra motivation I’m pledging to post at least one drawing from each day’s work here on the blog. Not because I think my work is so wonderful—quite the contrary, I can be very hard on myself. No, I’m primarily doing it because frankly I need the accountability.

Of course knowing that whatever I draw will wind up here in full public view leaves me tempted to play it safe and only sketch things I’m already good at drawing. But that would defeat the whole purpose. If I’m going to continue to grow and improve I’ve got to push myself to try new things and master new skills, whatever the results may be.

If you’d care to join me in this unofficial “Sketchbook Month”, leave a link to your blog/website in the comments section you can do so by visiting the official Sketchbook Month blog.

March is a month of new beginnings when the snow melts away, the grass turns green, and the birds start to sing. What better time to shake the dust off my sketchbook and start turning over new pages?

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