These three examples should take some of the mystery out of this technique. Give it a try.
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This fairy’s kiss is done in a profile (side view). Make sure you tilt the head so it’s facing downward. The nose should point the way!
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Even though these two characters are facing the same direction, make their expressions a little different, to prevent repeating yourself. The little bunny-doll should appear to be more afraid than the cat girl.
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This baby chick has a huge head – it’s even slightly bigger than its round and cute body.
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This sleepy kitty is drawn with its mouth almost touching the floor, and its head framed by two front paws.
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This manga boy is facing in a 3/4 view. But to make it look somewhat more dramatic, tilt the head downward just a touch.
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Bears have a very low forehead that slopes down just a little, and then continues into the snout.
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When I was in art school, the instructor told us two things that I devoted to memory: First, the directions to the school cafeteria. And second, he said that the word “artist” is a gift-word, which you can’t bestow on yourself. People must refer to you that way before you can rightfully claim that title as your own, he said.
I understood his point, which was that, just because you call yourself an artist, doesn’t mean you are one. After all, most professions have some type of minimum standard or credential.
You can’t go around calling yourself a lawyer and defending people without a JD, unless you’re eager to see what the inside of a jail cell looks like. And you can’t call yourself an economist if your resume includes “change maker” at the annual carnival.
But the creative arts are a different animal. Often – and this was the case in my life – an artist acquires professional credits before he or she ever sets foot in an art school, let alone earns his or her college degree. While I believe it’s fair to say that the majority of artists who have had some training possess more skills than the artists who have been exclusively self-taught, such is not always the case. There are many artists whose only formal training has come from eating a few sliders during recess while stealing some time to practice from how-to-draw books. Charles Schultz of “Peanuts” fame toiled away at a how-to-draw correspondence course. Self-taught artists are not uncommon in the profession.
When I recommend a graphic artist, illustrator, or colorist for a particular freelance job, some formal art education is a plus. However, I have also referred, and hired, artists with zero formal training, and few professional credits. They were generally young and early in their careers. The main thing, aside from the quality of their portfolio, was whether they presented themselves as professional artists. A person, no matter how talented, who is working on an accounting degree, but has an amazing portfolio (oh yes, this stuff happens) would not make an appealing candidate, because their priorities lay elsewhere. Most publishers or clients who are doing the hiring are looking for people who are “all in.” There’s just something dedicated about them. You know that their artwork means everything to them. Why? Because they’re “artists,” even if they don’t have formal training, or the professional credits.
Today’s take away is:
“You are what you dream to be.”
See You Soon,
Chris Hart
Your Cartooning Sherpa
Most of us accept the fact that we have to practice in order to draw well. But it’s easy to get distracted. Many things vie to steal your attention: maybe it’s schoolwork, or friction at the office, or food poisoning. Mere excuses! So what can you do to stay motivated?
Some people advise taking a stroll along the beach, clearing your mind, and centering yourself. Yeah, sure. If that worked, the beach would be teeming with art students and writers, who remain notoriously pasty-skinned. By the time you finished applying the sun block, and picking the sand out of your chicken sandwich, you wouldn’t have a creative thought left in your head. Det du ikke vil bruke med PayPal kan du enkelt og greit overføre til kort som er forbundet med din PayPal-konto casino fordeler med paypal.
No my friend, tranquility and yoga are not the answer. The answer is to multitask: do two things at once. In other words, practice drawing while you (fill in the blank). Let me explain. At night, when you’re watching TV, sketch during the commercials. I’m serious. That may sound funny because it doesn’t even seem like real practice. Ah, but that’s the point. All practice is good, and propels you forward. But be careful, the funnier the show, the less you’re likely to draw. This gives you plenty of time to sketch, especially if you draw during the warning announcement for the commercial about arthritis pain medicine. The point is that this approach takes the sting out of practice اراب فاينانشيال.
While there are periods where focused concentration is essential to make gains, it is consistency that brings the most gains. Therefore, the take away for today’s blog is this:
“It’s better to draw more often, than to draw for greater lengths of time.”
What are some other things you can do while you draw, so that drawing fits more easily into your schedule? Try these:
The list could go on, believe me. But even if you only fill 2 or 3 pages a week using this approach, that’s over 100 pages of sketching over the course of a year, which could greatly help you to hone your skills, as well as create some useful roughs for future works.
See You Soon,
Chris Hart
Your Cartooning Sherpa
When I began my career writing and illustrating art instruction books, there were already many manuals on topics such as perspective, watercolor, and landscapes. But very few books covered specific genres, such as cartooning. And no American author had yet introduced manga techniques to this country. And that’s because “style” had always been looked down upon in art schools as the illegitimate stepchild of classic techniques: it wasn’t art, according to the instructors; it was merely being “tricky,” a sort of visual artifice.
I believed that the instructors were wrong. In addition, I didn’t know why, having the type of expertise they did in the visual arts, the art instructors had such incredibly poor taste in ties. But that riddle remains a mystery, my friends. Now let’s get back to “style”:
So, what happened in the real world to those who adhered to the somewhat haughty, conventional wisdom? Unless they wanted to paint bowls of fruit for a living, they had to go back to the beginning to learn how to incorporate a variety of styles into the rigid format they had acquired. The jobs in popular media are in game development and character design, comics and graphic novels, animation and children’s picture books, humorous illustration and licensing. Each of these styles has specific visual conventions, and I’m not talking about Comicon.
Ask your average figure drawing art instructor to do a sequential page for Spider-Man, or to draw a simple retro cartoon character type, or any kind of manga girl. It will be bad. I’m talking shivers-up-your-spine bad.
Therefore, when I had my chance to publish my first book, How to Draw Cartoons for Comic Strips, I focused exclusively on style. Art students loved it. But they were also understandably reluctant to admit as much. In school, they carried my book wrapped between the covers of Albinus’ tome on anatomy (and by the way, what a fun read that is). If they were spotted reading my book, they would say it was a present for their kid brother. Or they would offer up the sheepish, “Ha, ha, this book shows you how to draw all sorts of characters and poses. What a time-waster, when we want to be drawing femurs and the Teres Major, huh?” Yes, my friend, I think we all understand your dilemma.
Fast forward to today: that modest, first book of mine went on to sell over 200,000 copies. Now, when you go to the bookstore, you’ll see dozens of art instruction books that focus on style. Thankfully, many of them are authored by me. But the important thing is that the era of looking down at style as something ancillary to art is a thing of the past. We’ve stepped out of the darkness and into the light. We’ve leaped into the future, where art is style, when the sun turns into a red giant and incinerates the earth. Okay, don’t think about the sun part – bad imagery.
So today’s take away is simply this:
“Style is art.”
See You Soon,
Chris Hart
Your Cartooning Sherpa