Portrait Practice

Working more on my portraits. Started off liking this one, ended up sort of hating it. I'm sure in a couple days I'll feel somewhere in between. Did this from a photo, it's a friend of mine from the Animation Forum. I'd like to start doing portraits more often, I know it's not animation, but I really enjoy them. Too bad mine never quite look like the people they're portraits of lol.
Anyway, here goes this attempt, c&c's welcome as always.

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Lessons for the aspiring cartoonist

My Mom was talking about starting to draw again (she did a lot once upon a time) and I told her I'd try to dig up some lessons for her to get reaquainted with the basics. While her interest is not in animation, I found this excellent site that gives short lessons on cartooning. As I read through it, I had a hard time pulling myself away from it. The lessons are very brief, just a page each, but it's laid out in a very fun to read/do way. There isn't much in the way of how to, rather it tells you what to do. Replicating each step is up to you, but there's nothing that someone with basic drawing skills can't do, and the lessons build upon each other in a very logical & well thought out way. Anyway, without hyping it any further, give these lessons a look if you need help getting started, or if you just feel like you could use a refresher. I found myself doing a handful of them just for the hell of it as I was reading along. You can find them at karmatoons Enjoy!And here is the rest of it.

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Building Drawings From The Ground Up

This is something I've discussed before, but it's worth metioning again, and again, and possibly a third time. It's about the importance of building a drawing up from a loosely drawn, rough sketch. Last time I talked about using different colored pencils for each stage a particular drawing goes through, which makes it easier to follow your "good lines" and avoid the bad ones. I find it also helps to leave any & all bad lines that you can, don't erase them, just draw over them with a different color. This will help you avoid the bad lines, whereas if you erase them, you will be much more likely to draw the same exact line again, which only leads to frustration.

That all said, I stumbled on this guy Comlock's site through a forum I visit. I'm not sure how to say it best, but what he touches turns to gold. He has his portfolio on his site, which I strongly suggest you check out. He also has a tutorial section in which you can see his artwork develop. Please take the time to look it over, especially if you have a hard time capturing weight, movement & emotion in poses. Don't worry about skill level involved, the same principles apply to building a drawing no matter what the artist's skill, and trust me, my best work can't even approach Comlock's worst, but I can & do learn from the approach he takes. Hopefully you will find his sketches, paintings & animations as informative & entertaining as I have.

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Drawing, poses, and character design tips

I made some comments about character design in my last post, and I've been involved in several discussions lately involving the drawing process (yes it is a process), so I thought it would be useful to show how these are of the utmost importance to a quality toon. I will start with drawing. When I first got into cartooning & started drawing a lot, I was absolutely addicted to my eraser. I used it more than I used my pencil, but my drawing skill was not really improving. Maybe eventually I got close to what I wanted, but not usually, & even if I did, it was hard to ink the right lines on a new page because of so many rubbed out lines on the first draft. I was advised by some people to stop using the eraser and instead use different colored pencils to correct bad lines. This was some of the best advice I have ever received, because by leaving your bad lines where they are, you can draw a good one where they aren't. Whenever I erased anything, 90% of the time I drew another line right over the one I just erased, then erased it again!(rinse & repeat?) When I started sketching in color, it became much easier to alter my drawing without erasing, & you can see that in a couple sketches on my last post. The end result of this method is that in time you will end up being able to make more confident strokes with your pencil/pen, and you will be LESS prone to making the same mistakes, whereas when you erase all the time, you will be just as likely to re-draw the same bad lines.
Another thing I find to be an integral part of the drawing process is making revisions. I usually start out with a very loose & rough sketch that captures the general idea of what I want, i.e. body position, size etc. Then on a fresh sheet & using a light table, I go over all of the good lines from the first drawing & tighten up the bad ones (this can be done digitally in TBS using the light table feature). This usually leaves me with a decent drawing but probably not perfect. This is where I look for details that could/should be added. Mouth positions, facial expressions & hand gestures can all add tons of personality to your drawing if they are done properly. Doing them properly requires as much or more discipline as it does talent. That may sound strange at first, but the fact is that the world is full of extremely talented individuals that never had the perserverence or discipline to amount to anything. *steps off soap-box*
So, now we need to work on some of those expressions & poses. This part of the process takes alot of thought, and the more you put into it, the more you will get out. The best tip I can give is to follow in the footsteps of Preston Blair. He was one of the most talented cartoonists there was, and whether you know it or not, you all know much of his work from Disney & MGM. The following pics are pages from his books that illustrate alot of what I said about building a final drawing through a series of revisions & stages. I'm sure his drawings carry more weight than my words, but to futher illustrate the importance of doing all this, I will give myself a homework assignment & try to duplicate the page of facial expressions using my character Larry. It will be a challenge for me, but I will be better for having done it, and I strongly suggest you do it too.

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