Finished Mickey

I really like this picture of Mickey. John's posted a few on his blog that are obviously from the same source, and they're all so fantastically cute. I am interested in figuring out this cute trickery and stealing it for my own questionable purposes.


I don't think I did too bad of a job! I checked my errors just the right amount of times, drew LARGE, drew with a regular pencil, had a really clear b/w print of the reference.

Of course, there are still some errors... the cane is at a slightly wrong angle, the viewer's left leg is too thin, there are some small accuracy issues with the hands, and I stretched the bow tie a bit. I didn't push the mouth shape far enough-- it just needs to be "more." More back, slightly wider open, etc.

There are some wrinkle inaccuracies in the main curtain shape, and I only noticed this upon scanning but I ACCIDENTALLY MADE EVERY CURTAIN FOLD VEER TOO FAR TO THE RIGHT. I am such a shmuck. I have no idea how that happened.

Also, pianos, particularly when they are submerged in darkness, are really hard to draw. I misinterpreted some angles again, there, but I was surprised how much easier the shapes were to handle with some good ol' hierarchy.

Maybe one day I'll learn to see angles correctly. Haha.

More Mickey

I got some more work done on Mickey between classes today! It was actually pretty quick, I didn't realize how much I had gotten done last night by placing everything so carefully. For the most part, not too many errors.

Of course, there are always SOME issues. The stool needs to be scooted up, I accidentally made Mickey's jacket too long, there are problems on both hands, and Mickey's eye needs to come out in space a bit more.

I thought earlier that the hat was probably off, but I couldn't see how. I now see that it was the piano that was placed somewhat improperly.

More to come today.

Edit: I feel like I'm cheating if I make too many posts in a day, so I'll just post this here:


EDIT/Important note because it's driving me crazy: The cheek is really messed up. I think I accidentally darkened the wrong line, or something. Ugh, either way, it is not right.

This was really... hard. Haha. I completely broke the perspective lines on the floor. They looked fine in my initial sketch, but I somehow messed up the angles during clean up... big-time. Urgh. I should have re-drawn the lines all the way through the TV when cleaning it up.


I find something about the overlay really jarring. I'm surprised how decently the puppets turned out, actually. I was really afraid of Beany, but he doesn't look too awful aside from some confusion in the mouth area; I don't think I made a good decision by representing his upper lip with that harsh line. Also, I think I misread Cecil's cranium alignment, because his eye didn't go where it was supposed to. It should probably tilt more to the viewer's right. Obviously the top of the TV isn't tight or correct on the right side, yuck.

I struggled a lot with this one. So many straight lines. Makes my head spin to do this sorta thing, which I guess made me set my mind out to do it. If I do enough it'll be less scary (and bad), is the hope.

Mickey WIP

I'm gonna try to start beginnings of studies at night when I'm at home and I can check things, and then finishing them throughout the day, on the go. Anyway, this is probably stage 2, I did the background rough first and then did some tests to place the character right.

This one has some errors.


The hands, feet, jaw, ears, and cane needed some adjusting. I made some quick marks on my paper, and now I'm way past ready for sleep. I've got to get up at 8 tomorrow, but it's darn hard to get to sleep when I'm ready to draw.

Definitely

I think I absolutely do better when I draw from paper. From the screen I end up with too many opportunities to zoom in too far (figuratively, not in Photoshop) and I end up focusing way too much on accuracy rather than good drawing. Sooo, yesterday and today I drew this more complicated Eisenberg character/BG study.


It's also much easier to critique it, because the mistakes are more "mine." Does that make any sense? Anyway, it comes out more organic.

Anyway, so I saw the angle of the image all wrong. What's interesting, though, is that the drawing makes sense on this new angle. It's still wrong, though. It's too sharp of an incline to the right. I have trouble in general making long straight lines, so this sort of stuff is tricky to me. Take note of the odd lumpiness of the sill. I'm trying to learn to get better at this sort of stuff without using straight-edges, because I don't like the look of that. However, neither does lumpy perspective.

There is also some off-ness on the details of the blinds. The doo-dad that holds them together and pulls them up (I have no idea what it is called) is too wide and not as tight as Eisenberg drew it.

The characters took me an aggravatingly long time to draw! I hate poor drawings of licensed characters. Whenever I draw one that looks somewhat off, it bothers me in the same way illegal bootleg T-shirts of Warner characters bothered me as a kid. You know, the types you find at flea markets and carnivals. Nothing irked me more, and when characters I know don't look right come out of my pencil, I have a tough time forgiving myself.

Anyway, I digress; Jerry's got a little bit of wonkiness going on. He doesn't feel as firmly planted on the ground as he should. His foot should be more forward in space, I think. As for Tuffy, he is actually seated further back in my drawing than he is in the actual image, and that throws his arm off. I had a hard time with that particular part of the drawing, too. His arm looks sort of like it's just floating stiff, not actually planted on the sill behind him.

Tuffy's face also looks incorrect; the details are too large, his ear isn't streamlined enough, he's looking in a different direction. Also, I misread the printout and made his tail a shadow. Sort of a dumb error, woops.

Some of the construction should have been more visible.

Hopefully I'll do another tomorrow. I have a few images I really liked printed out, and I'm collecting them in a folder so that I always have something to study handy.