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Thursday, December 14, 2006

More Class work

Sometimes it's too good not to draw. Our Model "Christine Havard" was excellent in the last session and I couldn't help but draw her. Thanks Christine!



Thursday, December 07, 2006

OSK!

I finally went out to see Jenny Lerew's Icelandic horses and I got a chance to sketch this one named "Osk". It was fun!







Monday, December 04, 2006

Gravity

It's what keeps us on the earth, otherwise we'd all be floating out into space. With out it we wouldn't be able to drive our cars or fly our planes. As we know the wieght of a car presses down on the road and the enertia of the vehicle pushes forward and voula! You're on you way to work. Our blood pressure and body structure is also dependent on it. Studies have shown that Astronuaghts that stay up in space for too long begin to atrophy and weaken as well as loosing bone density. We need gravity to survive.

And of course the other thing that shouldn't survive with out gravity is our drawings and art.

Too often the sketches of the models I see don't feel seated or balanced into their seats. The artist may also leave out important props like a chair and we then get floating people seated on thin air. A gesture sketch of someone sitting or opening a car door or anything involving a prop must have that prop drawn in. The prop is usually just as important as the character becuase it will help define what they are doing or thinking.

As gravity pulls on our bodies we don’t always stand straight up and down, I think we’d get tired and settle as we often do. We have a collapsible sort of break down to our postures. The soft malleable parts squash and bend and causes the opposite side to stretch until our hard bones and tougher cartilage rests upon itself and settles us into some form of comfort.

Understanding these kinesthetic ideas will also bring "Curves and Straights" into your work. Let their be straight lines in your drawings where it's needed. Allow for gravity to push up against your work and squash it to allow the form to have the weight it needs. If the person is sitting be cautious of how the rump flattens on the seat. Watch as peoples elbow to fore arm flattens on a table in the cafes. Watch the balance of the pose as you are laying down those first defining lines or your sketch.

Now here I give you {part one} of a bunch of pieces by a very talented friend of mine who is a staple in my gesture class Mr. Ken Morrissey. Ken has been an animator turned story artist and now animator again. His work executes many years of study and gravity definately plays it's part in his work. Ken is a very methodical artist with a keane sense for appeal and I always look forward to more of his work in class.

So please enjoy these pieces and as I always say, “have fun!”




Monday, November 27, 2006

Thoughts on drawing for storyboards-PT 2

So once again, now that I don't have any blogger issues I wanted to dish out part 2 of my tips on drawing for story. These pages were given to the Cal Arts kids a while back and I hope that this can inspire others as well.

the principles that weren't highlighted with visual aid in the last post were;

Line Density
Perspective and overlap
and Leaning the pose

I'm not going to go into heavy detail on these subjects, so I hope these pages are treated more like cheat sheets to remind us of the principles.

The "letter" panels on the left, really helped me understand this idea.

Leaning in the pose was something that Walt Stanchfield always knocked into my head. Certainly the straight poses in my examples have a place in this world but an ever so slight lean or a large lean, in any drawing helps give movement and wieght. Bill Peet does this constantly.


Once again, the perspective panels I drew were really more of a cheat sheet idea to remind us to overlap within perspective. Otherwise the drawings can be flat such as in the example third panel down on the right.

And last a few quick examples of high constrast and rhythm


Monday, November 20, 2006

Thoughts on drawing for storyboards-PT 1

I recently took some of the great illustrations from Bill Peet's autobio book and decided to draw over them and find out why I liked them so much. Aside from his artistic charm and wonderful acting and posing choices, there where things about his work that I thought supported what we do in the gesture class. We always look at these and grasp a bit of inspiration from them but then we keep on moving without considering how we can disect them. I know there are many ways of looking at art but for me this is how I looked at it and learned from it.

The terms that came to mind for me where:

Directional Rhythm- Using the lines and composition of the drawing to direct the eye to the point of interest.

High contrast- the point of highest contrast usually helps define the point of interest or the character you want the viewer to see.

Other terms {that will be on the next post, blogger issues} that I didn't write on these overlays, but it is evident in them, where;

Lean- do it when ever possible, even in the slightest way. only draw striaght up and down if the character calls for it. the more straight up and down the drawings, the less life it could have, so if your character is scared stiff maybe straight up and down is what you need. But lean when ever possible.

Perspective and overlap- We've all studied perspective and any book out there on the subject is usually fairly good to explain it but Overlap it extremely important to execute perspective Be it a flower pot, a car, a person or a building you need visual cues of diminishing sizes and shapes relating to each other to really get the effect working.

line density- the best way to understand this one is, if the object is further away, the lines should be thinner. If the object is close the lines should be thicker.

Tone and Value- Again, simply put, the closer to screen the darker it gets.


Life drawing and gesture drawing do translate to story sketching if we know how to bridge the gap. Hopefully these pics will help.






Thursday, November 02, 2006

Red Envelope

A friend gave me a gift in a red envelope
so I did this sketch on it for fun.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

skribbl's right

Here's one more!

Capt.Yolk!

I don't think my drawings of Jeremy Bernstein are as nutty as his but I tried. His link is on the right> check him out!


Thursday, October 26, 2006

Monday, October 16, 2006

Lombardi Ranch

Out in Canyon Country there lies a ranch where the people go to take their children for all of their Halloween tricks and treats. They have hundreds of pumpkins to choose from and the photo ops are excellent, {Drawing too}. We had a chance to go out on sunday and have some fun.


This guy was impressive without trying, he had firey orange hair, a freckled face and jet black clothes on. Very Halloween.


this old guy really didn't want to be there. He was just there to be on grandpa duty.


My son forgot his belt.



My son Diego looking like an Oxford kid on the hay stacks.

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