Polite Porky Lamp

Gonna study another one of these sometime. It's kind of hard capturing the nuances of a toy with lines, but fun. I'm working mostly from black-and-white prints, so I noticed that on the bow tie I went by the curve, not where the red ends.

Like I said, I was pretty unsure on the nose. Maybe on the next angle, I'll try a different, more detailed way of capturing it.

Ahh, I totally didn't make the vest dimensional enough on the right.

New toy studies: Tub back

I believe this toy belongs to the indestructible Kali Fontecchio! I am drawing a few of her toys that she's posted, and this is the first of three I started yesterday. I finished this one today.
My first shot turned out pretty slumpy and yucky, so I won't even post it.

So I straightened him out a bit. That head shape is a lot harder than it looks.
The hardest part, however, is that darned hat. It was kind of hard to see in my print-out, and it STILL isn't right. However, my paper was getting worn down from erasing and re-drawing. It is a learning experience.
So, I love listening to podcasts (preferably drawing/cartoon-related or boring informative ones) while I do my studies. Any recommendations?

Jinx studies

Midterms are finally done. It's spring break. Thank goodness. I find it so weird that I hate school for the first time since the middle school days. I'm getting extremely cynical about it. I'll make a post on why I want to unlearn art school some time in the next month or so... In the mean time, I'm happy as a clam actually having chunks of time to devote to studying.

I am itching to get going on animation studies again, but the stuff John told me to order still isn't here. I'm gonna guess it'll be here either tomorrow or Tuesday.

Anyway, I'm sort of a newcomer to John's blog. So here's an older exercise I've taken a stab at.


The photos of this toy were from John's blog.


It frustrates me that I'm still not totally good with construction lines. It's not second nature yet. I mean, I can use them as guidelines, sure, but I'm not understanding the form in space well enough. I want a series of egg-like, oval-like and circle-like shapes that are transparent and have the construction lines drawn on. I was actually snooping through Easter stuff at Meijer the other day hoping to find a totally transparent egg I could buy and marker up.

I spent the most time revising this one out of the three I did (I will probably do more).




Goddamn, he's cute.


The shape of his muzzle is more flat on top than I drew it. I sort of invented a bulk on the bridge of his nose that isn't there. I also notice that I misjudged where the horizontal construction line goes and stretched the eyes down to meet it a little. I really don't have much commentary besides that I apparently can't get a consistent grasp on head construction.




Poor Jinx looks like he was punched in the muzzle and everything on his head was pushed to the upper right.

I am giving myself lame critiques. I don't think I'm going to get better until I practice away my construction line issues.