Roman on horseback.

This is the first decent horse I've ever drawn from imagination. Woohoo! I like it, but I bet I'll look at it sometime in the future and find some fault I can't see right now.

Dec / Jan

I did this gag newspaper page instead of our usual holiday card, since we couldn't get the kids to stand still for a picture. I grew up looking at all the great early Mad Magazine artists' spoofs of print culture, so this was fun. Long live Will Elder!



I'm still copying from my horse drawing books. I got a great cheap brush pen in Chinatown (L.A.). After a bunch of scut work copying horses, I rewarded myself with some inking.



I decided to start cropping in on decent drawings if the rest of the page sucks... Why didn't I do this before?



I keep trying to draw directly, without any guidelines, or underdrawing, and try new tools. This was a 4B or 6B woodless pencil on so so paper.



I make a lot of little doodles and false starts drawing the kids. Here I actually made a good little drawing, then a bad one (cropped out). I had to include the horse head because it looks good to me.



I seem stuck on this idea that I have to learn to draw from life with an accurate but alive line. Sometimes it works like this, but it usually is a very controlled picture. I can dress it up with some watercolor, and I like the results, but I think I need to start working with value more. Plus, drawing with only line is a hard way to go.

Here I'm just copying the mighty Jean Giraud, or GIR, or Moebius.




It's funny that the French outdid us with the Western comics. Vive La France!


My friend Mike Vosburg has helped me a lot with my drawing. He complimented me on this, so I've included it.

Happy New Year!

Once in a while I can draw directly in pen. Then next time it turns out terrible. I just keep trying. Happy New Year everyone!

Cactus_01

I had to take the day off from work today to do a whole bunch of random stuff, but I managed to steal two hours in the middle of the day - woo hoo! I really hope I can find more time for drawings like this - it's very relaxing.

Color

I got help filling up this small post.

Horses, etc.

I learned to appreciate artists who can really draw horses when I worked with my friend Gerald Forton - I met him on a job and watched as he drew perfect horses in action straight in ink, no under drawing! (Here is a pic of him in his studio). It was humbling then, and still is as I try to steal an hour most nights to finally learn this stuff.

This diagrammatic drawing is boring and painful, but I included it for the students out there (isn't that all of us? You can't avoid this stuff). I didn't get a good art education, so copying (and drawing from life) has been critical to me.
I can't actually draw a horse this well. These are all copied from the great drawings in three excellent books on animal drawing: The Art of Animal drawing, by Ken Hultgren, How To Draw Animals, by Jack Hamm, and How To draw Animals, by the Famous Artists School. One of these days I hope to find some time to draw at the local horse stables...

The FAC book has some drawings by the great Harold Von Schmidt, who has somehow ended up mostly forgotten compared with Cornwell, Loomis, etc. He was a mighty talent.
Jack Hamm just couldn't draw as well as those fine illustrators, but he had a talent for teaching, and he managed to publish a few thin books that cover territory almost no one else did at the time.
Ken Hultgren worked at Disney, and could really draw animals!

I switched from Prisma pencil to charcoal - not digging the results.

This page was a lousy likeness of the model, so I tried to use the rest of the paper.

Another bad likeness of a different model - I'm seeing a pattern here...

This one actually kind of looks like the model! Not gonna mess up the page with a bunch of horse butts!

Voting

Watching the election results last night was an AMAZING experience! I'd planned on doing more voting sketches, but the line was not that long.


It was my patriotic duty to draw exactly what I saw as I waited in line to vote.


This fish has nothing to do with the election.

Characters...

My 5 year old finally convinced me to dress up for Halloween for the first time in 15 years! Then she demanded I make a drawing of it beforehand -at first we were drawing this together, then, as I realized it was turning out better & better, I sort of took it over. The better the drawing got, the more pissed off she got that I was trying to distract her into coloring something else. But I made up for it by letting her draw with impunity in my big sketchbook. Such drama!


This is an old page, but I like it. I think it is mostly me copying from the newspaper or magazines, but some is outta my head. Frazetta fans will spot something I pulled from deep in my memory bank and didn't even realize it ...

Early on a show, trying to warm up at home before I have to jump in.

From Life

If you're trying to draw realistically, you need an endless supply of new information - you can't just learn the academic stuff, then ignore life around you. You have to draw from life, even if it seems like you aren't getting anything out of it. I didn't keep a sketchbook for ten very busy years while I was buried in work and I regret it - my work showed it as I plateaued. Now I'm back to it, and my work is slowly improving, but most importantly, I've got the drawing bug again! Keep drawing folks...


Kids are (for me) the hardest of all to draw - they include gesture, story, likeness, proportion, anatomy, drapery - this is the only page in any sketchbook of mine where I think I got the gesture in every pose!

Life drawing class - I photoshoped two of my more finished drawings together here. I can only find time to go 3 hours a week, but it has helped my drawing a lot. I make lots and lots of very poor, humbling drawings every week of great poses by beautiful models, and it has forced me to work on my figures after years of thinking that I was done with all that. Also, it is great to talk art with whoever shows up - so refreshing after listening to people at work discuss the opening numbers for the latest superhero crap!


Trying to get a likeness...

You can get a kid to hold still for a long time if you take home your Cintiq and set the whole thing up - it's like they're frozen!


Trying out new pencils - I like trying new ones, but lately I keep going back to wax based pencils because I'm tired of my fingers smearing delicate drawings as I flip through my sketchbook.

The Guys at Work

We have these long video conferences with New Zealand, and sometimes it takes several minutes to reconnect, blah, blah, blah. I've always wished I could do some kind of reportage type sketches - capturing the essence of a scene- I do my best while we are all waiting around...


Despite all the finished drawings here on my blog, most pages in my work sketchbook look like this. I was following the director on an endless tech scout - in and out of vans and locations - when he finally started rattling off shots in the middle of a construction site - glad I had my sketchbook.


I was going to photoshop only the good head drawings together onto one page, but since this is an election year, I'm going with honesty. I don't like some of these, because they are not likenesses, or good drawings. But I stand by the few that are likenesses. My friends, you should elect me because... -- oh, all right, I used Photoshop here and there. But seriously, I like working with these guys.


Gerardo, sorry I made you look Spock in two drawings!

TV Sketches

So, these first two pages aren't very exciting, but someone at work was asking how I learned to draw the clothed figure. These little doodles from TV are part of it. Whether from life or TV, I find it pretty easy to only try to remember a small part of a moving figure, then jot it down. Gotta get something constructive from that idiot box!

Early on, I looked at the seven fold types in Bridgeman, but it didn't help me that much - mostly because I was still struggling with basic figure drawing. Once I realized that I'm actually a cartoonist, not a painter, (who actually would have to show all seven fold types), drawing drapery got easier. I started paying attention to seams, and trying to explain a fold with only 3 or 4 lines. Also, I thankfully found Toth, and the Famous Artist Course. There is a great book on drawing the clothed figure: Drawing People. Don't hesitate to buy it - amazingly, there is no other book out there like it.


These are from last year. I like them, but I wish I could nail a gesture drawing, like the animation artists.

The kids

Lunch Line Sketches

I draw these very fast, standing in line at Subway. Usually the drawings really suck, but if they don't, I color them later.