Today I’ve been working on “The Screwball Type” from Preston Blair’s Advanced Animation:

Here’s some progress studies:

I took yesterday off from drawing and it shows in my first drawing of the day here:

This image quality on these is terrible, but at least you can kind of see what I’m up to here. Looking forward to posting some scanned studies.

Really bombed this one:

This is probably the closest I’ve come to reproducing Preston’s work. And it wasn’t even the goal! I was just having fun and and focusing on flow and solidity and look what happened…What a revelation

This pose was a heck of a lot harder than it looked:

Here’s another, as well as a look at my sketch book:

I’ve created a new section called the Treasure Map. I discovered it can be difficult to quickly track down the best content on my blog. This new page, along with the search box (above right), is designed to eliminate those frustrations. Stop by and check out all the good stuff this blog has to offer. Much more to come so subscribe now!

I’m enjoying the process of drawing these a lot more than I was before because I’ve given up on the obsessive idea of reproducing an exact copy. I realized that that doesn’t matter, and that it’s all about absorbing the principles in these drawings (yes, it finally clicked), and not about learning a one dimensional skill such as copying exactly. These drawings, consequently, are way off from the originals, but I had a lot more fun drawing them (which I think shows), and I knocked them out a heck of a lot faster than usual. Much more to come.

I did these at work. I’m moving so my scanner is packed, but I still wanted to keep posting my studies. These were all taken with a digital camera, which explains the quality and lighting.  I’m going to try and do some of my own poses with this dog soon. I’ll be having surgery soon, so I want to knock out as many of these studies as I can.

Here’s some pages from the sketch book from the past week or so.  Looking at them now they don’t look as natural as I’d like. Starting a new sketch book soon. I love that feeling.

I felt good about this one when I was finished, but look how much it’s off on the overlay. Crazy! Must work harder…

I’ve been off my edge recently. I find it amazing that with drawing, at least this is true for me, I can suffer through crappy drawings for days, and then suddenly get a moment of inspiration where I just get it. Usually this lasts about thirty minutes, and I’ll crack out the best drawings of my life. Then it goes away. That’s the last week and a half in a nut shell. I live for those thirty minutes. You’d better not interrupt me when I’m in one of those moments either!

I’ve recently read, “The Animation Art of Friz Freleng,” as he’s the one WB director I knew the least about. Now I know more about him than any other, save Chuck Jones. During the process I discovered Hawley Pratt, and he quickly shot up into the ranks of my favorite draftsman of all time. Hawley’s one of those artists like Marc Davis, Bill Peet, or Freddie Moore that draw with a facility that foolishly leads you to believe that what they are doing is extremely easy to do. Then when you try and do it, you realize just how amazing they are. Here’s some of Hawley’s work scanned from the above mentioned book. If anyone has any Hawley Pratt work they would be kind enough to share with me, please comment!

Hawley directed, The Lorax, a remake of which was recently announced to be in production. Watch the original below: