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Wednesday, June 14, 2006

a small lesson 02

Many times we as story artist and gesture sketch artists concentrate so heavily on the characters facial expressions that we sometimes forget that the person we are sketching has a cranium. I have fallen into this trap many times and it isn't always easy to remember becuase we want the expression on the face to read. Tom Gately{who works at Pixar now, and is an amazing artist}would always get on my case about it. After a while of getting this banged into my head, I think I got it...I think. This is a small sketch that I did to illustrate the simplicity of the head. Its kind of like drawing two eggs overlapping each other. If we dont put something on the back of the head of a character or sketch, we just get a flat face with no construction to hang on to.

Remember the cranium!

9 comments:

Benjamin De Schrijver said...

Walt Stanchfield had a great handout about this. I've been using it ever since.

Knife and Onions said...

Dave, This a wonderful page with some wonderful drawings! I'll enjoy coming over and chilling here!

Nice!

Jeff said...

¡Usted es Dave tan derecho!! ¿Pero qué si usted está trazando pingüinos??? ¿O coches para esa materia?? Apenas reventando sus tajadas mi amigo. ¡Es una buena lección a recordar! ¡Ese rocas de Tom Gately!!

Steve said...

great tip Dave, thanks =]

Matt Jones said...

Really getting a lot out of this blog Dave. The gesture drawings, notes & insight are priceless. You seem to have such good models over there, are a lot of them actors/dancers/performers? It's easy to blame the model on an uninteresting pose & inspiration SHOULD be available in ANY human form in front of you but the regular models we have in London generally are only there for the money & often seem totally bored, which inturn shows in our drawings! The best models are those who are really into it & know what makes a dynamic gesture. There seems to be a surfeit of that kind of model in California.

Dave Pimentel said...

To all

thanks for visiting the blog, Im having alot of fun and Im glad people get something out of it. "Iron sharpens Iron"

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Matt,

the models we have in my class don't seem to be in any particular field such as dance or acting as far as I know, but Im sure they do act or dance in some form or another becuase they do a great job. I always encourage the model to come up with some bit of business with in their posing. a story should be in their head. Also we do quick sketches and they have to change position quit a bit so they probably want to change it up on each pose as to not be boring. We've had a few dead models from time to time but I axe them quick! It's good to tell your instructor these things and don't just accept dead models search them out and you'll find people who enjoy the art of it. I also like to show the model a drawing from one of the students and get them excited about their work. any how, cheers and Stay Inspired!

Moro Rogers said...

I wish I had seen that earlier.=p

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Martin W. said...

Wow, I just tried it on a piece of paper lying aournd on my desk and,..it works! At forst i thought "ohhh this is really ugly just drawing two eggs" but as i started to put the features in i saw a face emerging! Nice, thank you!!