Last of this page

The dog's face is framed by the door to the coop. Within that, the carefully-placed highlight also hugs the face. Fagan's framed by the coop's wall. Nice details like the tree and the sack also embellish but frame the interaction between these two.

The characters are making eye contact. The dog's line of action is straighter than Fagan's, and it's related to it, but they aren't parallel. They almost form a "D".

The boards on the left, back side of the coop are totally mismatched from the closer side. It breaks the shape down into something more organic (much like the shingles on the well from a few posts ago). I had to resist the temptation to line them up. I think it's funny this way-- this coop was built by hand. I should bear this in mind when I do my own backgrounds. Man-made stuff can be misaligned and asymmetrical (organic!) just like natural stuff. Especially if it's made of wood, and probably by somebody's grandpa.


The board that is atop the coop's door that stretches all the way across was messed up in my final lines. I made it way too small on the far side, so it sort of clips awkwardly. I need to be more careful about preserving shapes like that.

I accidentally made Fagan squeeze himself too much-- to the point where I skinnied up his abdomen! ;)

I think the hardest part about studying Eisenberg is his treatment of eyes. They're so tiny that they're very easy to mess up-- even a few specks of poorly-considered graphite change the directionality.

i didn't see no fox

today I got that tooth pulled. I am either really feelin' a gigantic bloody crater in my mouth or drowsy off of painkillers. I did this study during a sort of in-between moment this evening:

I might do a drawing or two before bed since my sleep is all messed up from today, but I also just might crash. It's hard to tell.

Just a minute bub!

Old cartoonists can pull off improper English in the best ways. No one else has license to language like these guys.

I did this in someone else's basement tonight, and I feel like I'm committing a faux pas if I stay on here for too long. I took a few little liberties in this one though, especially on Fagan's hands. Not sure if it worked out or not. The dog's arm/hand aren't perfect, looks sort of squished and wimpy. I also evened out some of that lovely asymmetry on the cheeks. No bueno. I feel like the face is clearer than in yesterday's panel, though.

Tomorrow I get a tooth pulled!

THERE!

I love this page of Eisenberg's. This is actually the last panel of the page (you will see more as I study them) but I loved it so well that I had to draw it first.

Thoughts:

The detail is handled masterfully and reigned in by sensible hierarchy. The shingles and wood grain on the well are controlled by keeping them wrapping the form, but are full of life because they're asymmetrical, organic. They are not in equal rows; notice the extra shingle on the bottom left! I wonder if he drew the shingle to the right of it too small and needed to fill a space. Either way, it's great and works just fine. The wood is also organic, and has some lovely little details, but it's never distracting.

Things made of brick and stone are usually intimidating, but Eisenberg handles it like a pro-- not every stone needs to be drawn. They're the smooth, well-worn, old, and organic types of rocks people used to build things instead of ugly fake bricks. It looks worn and fun to touch. They hug the outside, and of course wrap around the form.

The bucket is a nice touch, and works as part of the well's overall form. It really contrasts nicely with the delicate tree that frames the left side and adds interest. The tree's in silhouette, too, so white it's very delicate, it's nowhere even resembling distracting.

Fagan himself is a beautiful pose! I was attracted to it immediately. I love how he sits in the middle of that perfect circle of a motion line. It's a pose you're not terribly prone to seeing in newer cartoons. It's so round and exaggerated. No one ever kicks back that far. You can tell exactly what has just occurred.

Even Eisenberg's speech bubbles are great. I love how they're cloudy, just for the sake of fluorish. It's also nice since it's in the sky, it almost doubles as a cloud at first blush. The composition has a lot of yummy places for your eye to travel to.
I wound up rounding out some of Foxy. His hand is the most noticeable. His upper body also seems evened out, puffed a bit, even. I dug the details in too far, mostly because I had to erase them a few times when I was struggling with the face. At first I missed the angle of his brow. I rounded out some of the contrasts, and ate up some of the space. Hopefully I can focus more on that in the closer compositions of the page in the future.

I just noticed, too, that the right side of the well tapers off in the wrong way. It should have more mass leaning to the upper right.

ALSO: I discovered a 5B pencil. I'm used to working with harder ones. Anyway, it's fun and you don't need to press as hard (something I need to force myself out of doing). I'm gonna look into getting even softer pencils, soon, if I can scrape together the cash.

Post tree post before bed

I keep falling asleep during my usual Monday-Wednesday drawing slot... I guess I need to sleep more at night, I can't stand wasting my time like that.

Here's a simpler Eisenberg panel, with a character and background elements. I'll do a more complicated one soon. I thought it made sense to draw a Tom, seeing as I'm working with him already.

I made some unscanned adjustments to this (the most obvious being the shape of the couch and the awful mistakes I made on the wall corner). Truth be told, I think my mistake one looks pretty ok, but it was inaccurate in describing the actual shape of the couch.

Wobbly lines... I think my lines are more confident than they were last winter, but I gotta stop being so jittery.

Argh!! I gotta stop getting frustrated, but I'm not doin' this right, lately. I've slowed down and started obsessing over detail accuracy, and it's making my stuff worse. I need to get back in the groove, I guess. Part of the problem might be that I've been doing the last few studies off of the monitor instead off off of a print-out. It's uncomfortable and more difficult to concentrate. Since school's starting up again, I'll have access to free printing, so hopefully that'll be fixed soon.

Howie Post composition

There is some general offness (the hat, there are some proportion issues on Nightmare [and some facial construction misreading] and the hat), but this is a lot better than it was when I first roughed it out. Next time I am going to make a point of scanning earlier levels of hierarchy before continuing, though. You can't really see a lot of my earlier marks, and what you can see is mixed with a bunch of lines I didn't use. Hm.

Early start

I got a little start on a quick Howie Post composition exercise...



Things just need to be... more. I need more contrasts. I'll fix these (oh so professionally marked) errors tomorrow, before I go over it with regular pencil.

I need to start drawing bigger.