Much ado

Nothing new

Been hard at work getting my short story ready for my animation class.

Another

Back to the grind

Drawing using only pen has brought some goo things to my work, at least thats how it feels. It has given me more confidence in my lines and a better grasp on thinking before doing. One thing that I really wish I have are peers that I can bounce ideas off of and to help develop each other work. Frank and Ollie esque.

Back to basics... again.

Back to the beginning to start again.

Easily distracted

The word of the day is distracted. I came across a book on drawing animals, one of many things on my to learn list. There are a lot of pictures in the book and the author seems to like horses the most... Then again I didn't get very far in the book because my imagination was already putting things together within the first couple of pages. With inspiration buzzing through my mind I took up residency in front of the TV... bad idea. As someone who can be easily distracted the flickering box quickly grabbed my attention, only to let go during commercials. Progress was slow and inspiration drowned in the ever mind numbing drivel pouring from the screen. The more I watched TV the less I was able to see shapes and imagine things. Below is a great example of that.


I started out drawing middle top, then to right, bottom left and finishing with what can only be seen as a whale wearing a top hat. That was all I could imagine after watching for a couple hours and even that was hard to bring into existence.

Reminded

It's funny to think that a cartoon stylized drawing can remind you of people you use to know. For some reason while I was drawing the girl, she reminded me of someone. I am not sure if it is the likeness or just the specific care taken when developing the drawing after it had taken shape but for some reason it hit me.

Keep going

Keep trying to push yourself to the full extent you can do and then take it further. Not quite to the point where frustration takes control of everything but right before, right when you have to be creative to solve the problems at hand. An idea is the start of something not the completed work. The times when I feel the most frustrated is when I thinking about the final polish more than dealing with the problems at hand.

The more I draw the more I realize that texture is a very important thing but what makes up a texture? Is texture even the right word to use? hmmm... I want to know patterns and how materials react in the light. To me this feels like it's something important to start learning. Also I think now would be a good time to revisit some anatomy dvds to see if anything was over looked or if anything else can be absorbed.

Texture

So I have been having issues with understanding what it means to bring a piece of work into polish and final. What if, instead of obsessing about the meaning you just move onto the next phase of learning how to draw? Okay, how about just giving the characters something to do? Like an action pose? Ya, that would be cool... hmmm this still looks kind of bland, I mean they are still naked. I know lets' try giving stuff some texture. You know, try to make things look like they feel and react differently.



This seems to add polish or at least take the drawing to the next level.

Varied style

Using the circles allows me to give more thought to what the character looks like. It is kind of freeing to have the height and a break down of the section already done but is best used as a loose guideline rather than a law.

The circles

For some reason, before starting a character, if I map out their height in circles (or heads) next to where it is going to be drawn I can finish the piece faster and just looks better. So far it is working really well on cartoony characters but soon I will try it on more realistic characters.