2 day figure drawing session at nucleus

If anyone is interested, there is a 2 day figure drawing session from 8:00 sat night until 10:00 the next night. Jan 2-3. Check out nucleus for more info. See you there.

How I study

So, I said I would post some of my "how I learn" studies. Here are 5 hand studies from "Alice in Wonderland" along with some notes. I'm just posting 5 of these, but I do hundreds just like them every day from comics, "how to draw" books, movies, from life, magazines, etc. In the old days of animation you would have a mentor you could take your drawings to and ask him how to fix it. You probably wouldn't even need to study in this way. But, if you don't have someone to show you how to do it, this is a nice alternative. I find it's a good way to improve really really fast and it becomes addictive when you start seeing how much better you get.

Feel free to send me stuff

So, Tyler sent these amazing drawings and asked how to "turn" them. He posted what I drew for him here.

Tool kit

So, how do you start. You can use anything in your toolkit. Different artist lean on different tools more heavily. Just see what you like. I like to start with shape rhythm or gesture depending on the pose.

How I learn

I'll post my studies after I do them.

more comic process

So, now I'm moving on to color. I just start anywhere I feel I can handle. I save the hardest, or least enjoyable parts for last. This way I have enough done to motivate me to finish the page. I went straight from the rough into color for the top right drawing. Next I wanted to do the bottom panel. I fixed the head tilt on the right character and worked him out a little more. I also worked out the glove a little more. I'll go straight to color now. When I clean up, I constantly flip back to the under drawing. Every couple of lines I put down, I check back to make sure it's getting better and not worse. I basically just chisel out the shapes a little more and make sure they are working.



I work in photoshop. I keep what I have finished open on the top monitor so I can refer to it. Also, this story was written by Howard Shum.

Leg anatomy

Different approaches

So, Marco asked how to start a drawing. There are as many different ways to draw as there are people. Some people start with the nose and then draw the eye and work their way out drawing every piece with perfectly clean lines. Some people draw with only perfectly ruler straight lines. Some people draw with little tick marks all over. Some people draw with wild scribbles. I draw with flowy lines and big shapes. The important part for me was first learning the pieces. the hand, foot, eye, mouth, ribcage, etc. then, I'm not trying to figure that part out when I'm drawing. Once you have the parts, you can focus on the whole. I can't really do both at once. So at first just draw slow and figure out the parts. Then you can draw in whatever style you want. There are also a million different ways to think about the parts. That's why I study. I find as many ways to draw a head, or a hand, or a ribcage, and I combine all the ideas until it makes sense for me. I try to make everything as simple for myself as possible, so I can worry about the pose, gesture and shape and something I haven’t talked at all about, the emotion.

why I break the figure into 3 parts

Where the cartoon shorthands come from

All cartoon shorthands come from anatomy. For instance, that classic jelly bean (or pair) shape we are so used to seeing comes from the combination of the ribcage and the pelvis.

another thing to practice

Here is another thing that can help you learn. Try taking a character and drawing it on model in your own pose. Here is Mogli from the Jungle book.

For Ivan

So Ivan posted a construction drawing of Mickey here and had a few questions. Hopefully this helps.