Last two days' studies revisited

TOM PUNCH

Whew. Drawing bigger was a very good idea. I'm drawing on niiice, big bristol with a regular stupid mechanical pencil and I love it. It's just easier to get out a gutsy, sensible drawing quickly. I'm also working on bringing my line quality back to something appealing and smoother. I'm no Chloe Cumming, but it's getting better.

Anyway, I started this while waiting for my exercise class to start (Yeah, I needed an extra credit hour or two, and I need to work to stay in decent shape). I could tell while drawing it that the arm was elongated, but I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, exactly. I erased and redid it a few times and fixed some related problems, but I wound up not totally getting it.

I was pleased to notice in an overlay that I pushed his chest out higher. I did pretty decently with the line of action, which is good. I still end up with a lot of observational problems, though (some rotated angles, some proportions, some placement). Also, as mentioned, I don't know what I was thinking with the punching bag.



The overlay wound up working seperately, which tells me that, if I were able to, I should have double-checked the placement of the initial big forms before going into detail. That wasn't an option at the time, but I gotta be more aware before I go into detail. Because Jerry's head was off, so were all of his details, and I think that's also the cause of (or perhaps an effect of) Tom's head being expanded toward him, so his eye mass could meet his Jerry's little fist. The arm was just an observational error. It isn't as gutsy as the original.


As I mentioned, Tom's face is puffed out to meet Jerry's fist, probably a result of me trying to make sense of the negative space. I'm thinking Tom's face was the actual issue, and it pushed Jerry back in space. It just throws off a TON, even though it's a relatively small mistake, having the cranium extend slightly leftward! Wow.


RED RABBIT




I started this one the night prior. I sketched it up REALLY quickly. It was one of those beautiful moments where things just come out of your pencil just right. It has some accuracy issues, but I was really proud of how darn fast I sketched this one out and made sense of the space. I think this is a good sign.

Overall, this one was more successful than the Tom study in terms of relative placement. Lots of issues with particulars, though-- I fancied the ground higher up than it actually is in the image. Everything that should be planted firmly on the ground is firmly planted on some imaginary surface a few inches above the grass.

Actually, the whole thing has weird stretching issues. The cactus, all the legs, Red's pants, and especially Red's head are squished vertically and, in the case of Red's head, stretched horizontally.

I'm going to do my best to get two done in the next two days, as well. I'm happy with this rate of productivity, I feel like I am genuinely getting back into the swing of it. I also feel a lot better-prepared for my own poses, so I'll be revisiting Tom soon. I don't even know if I'll use the old ones beyond the general idea, it might be easier just to start over.

I need to destroy my own stuff AFTER I'm done with it with a critique (and try to be more conscientious the next time around) rather than belabor over it and take a hundred zillion years to get stuff done. It's gonna take a hell of a lot of work to catch up to these other cartoon college students and I can't do it if I don't just bite my lip and worry about every study. So I've just gotta do. Do do do. Doo-doo.

Real quick

Biggest problem I can see right away: I botched the shape of the punching bag! What the heck? It's pushing totally the opposite way. I don't know how I overlooked that.

I know I'm late to the game with this one, but I had fun... Drew it between classes today and finished it this evening. I actually have a second cover study that I'm about halfway done with, maybe I can finish it tonight. Wish me luck, will talk more later.

Also, I am not only back to studying off of prints, but I am back to using just plain ol' pencil. It's messy but I missed its easy line.

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.

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.

Thinkin' 'bout Tom's digits

I'm working on my Toms. First, today, I went through and sillo'd yesterdays drawings, made some marks, took a couple of notes after considering John's input.









After doing this, I started looking at some Eisenberg Toms-- tracing over the hands and feet and making observations, then doing some quick little studies of the hands and feet.



Observational traces-- what makes these different? What makes them appealing?

Things to note:

• The fingers are much skinnier and more articulated.
• They wrinkle more and do not bulge as much, though they do thicken out from their point of origin slightly in some images (see the drawing below)
• No visible claws most of the time (though I might still keep them out on the middle 2 of my Tom's poses).
• Both the hands and feet are significantly more streamlined, and the bottoms of his feet are less apparent.
• There is a slight indentation on the bottom of Tom's feet sometimes-- it sort of cups, but other times it a convex surface. This is interesting because it's totally cartoon logic-- it's aesthetically appealing and interesting, but feet don't work that way. I imagine it is only used to caricature a foot that is being pulled back and slightly cupped (relevant to what I'm doing).
• The feet are, again, more streamlined-- the toes are much less individual, they more strictly follow the overall shape of the foot much more than I've been drawing. The foot shape isn't really a seperate shape, but rather a slightly hinged part of the foot that can only deviate from the foot shape so much. It reminds me of a sock shape-- if Tom were wearing socks with a different-colored toe part, his toes would fit in them perfectly.
• Eisenberg always draws Tom's feet with an obvious heel.
  

So, here are some quick studies-- they aren't perfect but they helped me get acquainted with the shapes better.

I botched the hand, here-- I was confused by the contour of the middle finger. Now that I look at it, I don't think the dividing line on the fingers-shape is correct. I think I may have followed the line too far and was thrown off of the shape. I think it's a much more streamlined shape, now that I look at it.

Hmm, well, I'm learning. I'm glad I took the time to do all this. Now to draw the new stuff into my Toms...

Don't think I've forgotten about the composition image! I'm sort of going back and forth between Toms and newer studies, I guess.

Tom poses - further along!

So, jeez, I finally "finished" these poses. I put that in quotation marks because, uh, they aren't perfect by any measure and could still use work. But I brought them to a point at which they resemble complete drawings.

Also note: These drawings are NOT this dark in real life!! I just upped the contrast so that some of the blue lines might be visible... kind of in vain, because so much of it just wasn't picked up by the scanner. But you guys saw most of my construction progress, you know I used it.

I had a lot of doubts about pose 1 because I couldn't think of a way to make the silhouette more clear, but I actually think this one's face turned out the best. It's cute, though I don't know how satisfied I am with the eyebrows. Tom has spotted something appetizing, presumably Jerry.

Did I mention that I started this exercise trying to draw Jerry, and then I realized after a few days of frustration that, duh, I don't like Jerry. I've never liked Jerry. I always wanted him to get eaten. Probably because I like cats.

By the way, I used mostly Preston Blair's Tom for reference, with a teeny bit of Eisenberg to make sense of the muzzle. I like the big hands and feet, though despite my efforts to thin them up, they at places (particularly where the foot is curved) look too bulbous, still. John told me to watch for it, and I tried, but I think curled toes are too cute. I might go over them later...


I like this one's nearer hand. It wound up being a nicer form than my original silhouette idea was. The face, here, though, is the worst of these. It's too squished and lacks appeal in the eye area. I need to do some more hierarchy studies of squished, wrinkly faces... The eyes/eyebrows look bad in a way I don't know how to articulate aside from "ugly" and "amateurish." Yuck. #2 has slightly less bad, but still present, versions of these problems. Like I said, more facial studies needed.


This pose definitely came the farthest, I think. It's a lot better than my first version. Wowee, a functional silhouette!

It's not exactly radical or crazy what I did with his face here, but it was the hardest of the 4 expressions to pull off (which is sad because it's pretty simple), but it turned out halfway decent. I like the nearer half of the muzzle-- it's really defined. The mouth looks clear. I wish I could say the same things about the eye area, though, again. It just looks a mess, and the more you struggle with areas like that, the messier the paper gets, and the harder it is to get a finer point.

Also, the upper hand looks like it's being supported by an invisible mound of some sort. I think I just put the arm that leads up to it too far down, so it doesn't make spatial sense.

Well, I've got an awful lot of work ahead of me, but I'm glad I finally "finished" these. I need to do more. Many more, until this is all second nature.

NEXT: A fun Howie Post composition drawing John posted!!

More Tom

Dental work was awful!



I've been roughy trying to figure out how to improve the silhouettes on the poses in the last post... Do they read more clearly now? I can't figure out how to work on the first pose's silhouette anymore and still get what I want across, but I worked on these 3. I'm still pretty unhappy with the last pose, but I think the other two look better now. More to come.