Running of the Elves

Had a blast drawing today. I woke up with a really bad hand cramp, and drew through it. It was still bugging me all through work today, hopefully it doesn't persist. It's seemed to have subsided for the moment though. Woo Hoo! If anyone knows of any good exercises or best practices to avoid getting hand cramps please let me know!

Worked on some more Preston Blair Elves. They were a bit difficult. If only because of how small I had to render them, while still trying to give them personalities, and keep the perspectives, positions and anatomy correct. Well, as correct as elf anatomy can be. The image really didn't even come together until I re-penciled it darker. Now I like it.

My friend Pelch is starting a new blog. It sounds like it's gonna be great. Anyways, he asked me yesterday, if I could draw a T Rex reading. Here's what I came up with. He seemed to like it too!



When his blog is up and ready I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Yesterday, I mentioned "Avoiding the Tangent." I read about this in Walt Stanchfield's book Drawn to Life Vol 1. I found it really helpful, it has popped up in my mind in almost every drawing I've done since. He explains it eloquently, but I hope I can give you at least an idea of what it means. First of all what is a tangent. Basically for us it means, a line that you make somewhere on the page that flows into another line.

Let's take a look at this duck's beak (again see Drawn to Life Vol 1).


In the first picture it looks like the head is flowing into the beak. The line doesn't seem to really break even though there is a corner of a beak drawn. Now the second image takes that same idea but instead of the line of the head and the line of the beak being on the same curve or tangent it's been moved down and over. Thus you get a more accurate representation of the image you want to display. It adds more weight, depth, perspective and definition.


Here's another example. Just by adding a few clothing wrinkles that break the line flow the image seems to pop quite a bit more.

On a final note, S. Manor, who commented on the site a few days ago, started a new sketchblog. You can check it out at http://smanorsketchblog.blogspot.com/. Her sketches look great! Hope to see a bunch more great drawings from her! Best of Luck!

Oh, and here's a few more Gilligan the Giraffe sketches from earlier today!



Happy Drawing!

Good, then Fast, then Good and Fast

Another late night tonight! Albeit, I fell asleep on the couch after work, but hey. Got up early to do a bit of perspective work. Still find some of the angles quite challenging, but I'm enjoying the learning process. I like adding more detail through perspective (ie small characters in the background, characters off to the side and bent in strange positions) it's something I really haven't implemented into my drawing repertoire. I look forward to using this tool more and more.

Messed around on chatroulette again tonight, it's just such a great way to practice for me and I have fun doing it too. Not as many people were receptive tonight, but I still managed to get a few pretty decent sketches out of it.

A couple of great points of inspiration from the various readings and listening I did today. I forget if it was Kevin Cross, Joshua Kemble, or Chris Oatley who said it, but this phrase really stuck with me. Forgive me if it's a little off, but it was something to the effect of "First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast." Definitely something for me to strive for, and keep in mind while I'm trying to master my drawing. (as heard on Chris Oatley's Artcast). The other quote that really stuck out to me today was again from Walt Stanchfield's Drawn to Life Vol 1 "What a horrible fate - to be just a drawing." He was talking about having meaning and feeling behind each and every gesture and drawing you make. I really wanna get to that point some day!

One last thing! I got my first comment on the blog yesterday! Well to be completely honest I got a comment yesterday (thanks anonymous) to try out chathopper in lieu of chatroulette. Which I did. I like the interface a lot better than chatroulette, but it doesn't seem to have as many people on, at least tonight. So I ended up going back. Anyways after I saw I had a comment yesterday I went back through some old posts and saw that I had a comment on an older post! Just wanted to give a shout out to my first commenter S Manor and her blog monoclecomics. Awesome stuff over there, you should really check it out. Thanks for the feedback! I'll have to do another expressions study sometime soon.