ComiCrazys has posted a bunch of Looney Tunes screen caps for your cartoon studies. I’m looking forward to studying these myself.

This must be what I sound like when I talk about animation to people, just rambling on and on, and so passionate.

More of the same from eBay. Some of these won’t be as useful to study as the angle they were photographed at skews the covers so the characters are slightly off model. But it’s still cool to look at all these vintage comics.

And while I’m on the subject of cartoons, check out Kevin Langley‘s latests posts on Andy Panda. Love ‘em!

Andy Panda – “Playful Pelican”
Dan Gormley – New Funnies
Andy Panda – “Dog Tax Dodgers”

There’s some great Looney Tunes comic covers to be found on eBay. You don’t have to spend the cash to buy the comics, just download the images. Sometimes it’s tricky because of no-right-click scripts, but the covers are great to study cartoon construction, so it’s usually worth the hassle. Here’s some of the ones I found that I plan on studying in the future. I thought I’d share.

My efforts of learning how to draw extend not only to studying different techniques of actual drawing, but also literally how people draw. That is, how they hold the pencil throughout the process of drawing. Where do they grip the pencil? What angle do they hold it at? How hard are they pressing? These questions and more are ones I’ve studied Pete Emslie’s videos for the answers to. It’s just a little detail I think might improve my ability. Anything to make drawing a little easier right? And if you watch Pete’s old videos, he makes the process look exactly that, easy.

Pete’s finally got some more videos, and they are great! If you like them too, I would encourage you to let him know by commenting on his blog. It’s the only way he’ll clue in and make it a regular thing. Here’s the first part of his video. Click here to go to his blog and watch the second video.

Sam Nielson has written a great post on the difference between abstraction and caricature. It’s very informative, and well worth the read. Thanks Sam!

Merry Christmas everyone! This year the budget was a little tight so I sure couldn’t spend as much as I usually do. My girlfriend has been bugging me to draw her for a while now, so I figured this was a good opportunity to break the ice. I’ve never really designed anything myself, I’ve just copied, so this was really exciting. After a couple of weeks of figuring out how to draw her, I finalized a design. I used all the principles I’ve been hammering into my brain from Preston Blair’s book about solid drawing and cartoon construction, and finally came up with something on my own. I’m very happy with the pencil drawing. Especially since this is the first time I’ve done something like this. Everyone calls her “Tink” because she’s so tiny and cute, so I figured I’d make it official, and draw her as Tinkerbell.

My original idea was to transfer the drawing to pastel paper and use Bill Pressing’s technique to paint it up nicely. Since I had never used either Acrylic or Watercolor before, I was very nervous. All I had on hand for supplies were some really cheap paints I got free somewhere. So I wasn’t expecting the result to be amazing; I was just hoping the vitality of the drawing would shine through because I was happy with that. Here’s a rough color concept I did in Photoshop quickly to get an idea of what I was going to do for color. Seeing as it would be my first time working in two mediums, I figured it would be best to make things as simple as possible.

After a couple re-dos, and lots of patience, I finished it up a few days before Christmas. I wasn’t very happy with the result, but she loved it. And that’s all that matters! Now I’m looking forward to getting some quality paints and trying to get better at this technique. Obviously it’s Bill’s technique, and the last thing I want to do is just copy his style, but it’s a fantastic technique to try, especially when you’re starting off, because you get into great habits right away. Eventually I’ll come up with my own variation as I inject my own style into it. Here’s a picture of my girl with her new portrait.

I chose a simpler character today, and was able to draw more than usual. I numbered the drawings in the order I did them, and it’s interesting to see that the line quality got better, then worse, and then better again.

I like these drawings because I enjoyed drawing them a lot, but there’s a lot of wobbly, hairy lines I don’t like. They are bigger than I usually draw too, which is promising. I really can’t wait until I can draw every line confidently and accurately. Time will only tell. Out of these I like 3, 4, and 9 the best.

Hey look! I notice a very very slight improvement in the line quality. Can you see it? Look real hard…Don’t see it? Try looking at them with your peripheral vision.

In all seriousness these do look a lot more solid than my previous attempts. This little guy is a real bugger to draw, and there’s a lot going on in the ones where he’s in drag. I have a long way to go, and there are a lot of errors I can spot in these, but I won’t bog myself down with those right now. I’ll work on those tomorrow.

I don’t know about you, but for me, drawing has to be the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. My whole life I’ve been able to put my mind to anything and be good at it in a respectable amount of time. Whether it was a sport, a game, a job, or any number of other tasks, I could just do it. That’s not to say I’m amazing, I prefer the humble road most days. But is drawing really this hard? I realize there are people that it comes naturally to (I hate you). But I’m beginning to think the world is playing a cruel joke on me. How can I want this so bad, and at the same time struggle with it so much?

There are days when drawing comes more naturally than others. Days where I have a sense of flow I just don’t have other days. But those days are rare. Most days I have to really fight and struggle to get what’s in my head out of my hand and onto the page. I literally have to talk my way through the construction of a drawing (out loud!). My lines look like chicken scratch, I can’t draw a circle to save my life, and it goes all down hill from there. Where do you get motivation from starting off like that?

Well, if I wasn’t such a stubborn bastard, I’d have quit this art game not long after I started. If I didn’t have this burning desire in me to be good at this one day (I must be insane), I’d let every shitty drawing ruin my day. I am in the really crappy learning phase, filled with mostly plateaus, and every time I produce a (bad) drawing, I look at it and say to myself, “It’s a “learning” drawing,” or, “Only 98,000 bad drawings to go…” at least according to Chuck Amuck…

Today (obviously) was a hard drawing day for me. I had to wrestle for the better part of two hours to get these four drawings out of me:

What’s frustrating for me is I have no idea what that means. You see, I work alone on this stuff.  So I don’t know how bad that is. How far I have to go before this crap sinks in and becomes “second nature” like I keep reading on all these blogs. I have no peers around me to guide me, and learn from. That’s where school is invaluable. But that’s not an option for at least another year. So tell me, how long did you have to wrestle with this stuff before you got it down? Do you wrestle with it often? Do you have good and bad days? Am I normal?

I realize I will be struggling with this stuff my whole life, and I’m cool with that. But I’d like to hear other people’s stories as well.

Post a comment and let me know.