You Might Be a Visual Storyteller If...

Friday, April 9, 2010

So, I went on a family outing this evening to attend a somewhat historically significant hockey game (if you're at all interested in hockey, anyway).  Three renowned, record-holding players (Mike Modano, Marty Turco and Jere Lehtinen) played their last game for the Dallas Stars (or, in Modano's case, his last game in professional hockey, period.)  It was a very emotional game for players and fans alike.  And best, of all, the Stars won!  What a wonderful final game for some of the finest lads to whack a circular flattened thing with a stick.

At any rate, I didn't really even pay attention to the game until it was almost into the last period.  What was I doing during all that time beforehand, you ask?  Playing games on a mobile device?  Reading a book?  Staring blankly into space and pondering the meaning of existence?

NO!!!

I WAS SKETCHIN', FOO'!

Here are some samples of gestures I drew during the game.  You can see a few places where I drew the same poses more than once in attempt to get a better read/silhouette/line-of-action.  I'm going to get better at these things, dang it!

They're roughly in chronological order from top to bottom, so hopefully you can see a gradual improvement and gaining of confidence as you look down the page.  I'm terribly out of shape, though.  I really need to do this on a daily basis.

Caricatures, part deux

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

So, here are the caricatures I drew for the second half of March.  Some of them aren't too bad, some of them are a little off the mark, and some of them are just... Aughghgh.

I'm better than I was when I started, but I've still got a long way to go.

And, dadgummit, eventually I'm going to find an appealing way to draw eyes.  I couldn't draw eyes with appeal even to save my life. ... Not without copying someone else's style, anyway.

















 April's challenge is focused on drawing poses.  Rather than drawing them straight from life, I'm attempting to develop skills in drawing "from the gut" - taking my knowledge of anatomy into account, but drawing how the pose FEELS rather than just slight exaggeration of real life.  I've been studying cartoonists and the old Warner Bros animations, and realized that many of the drawn poses aren't anything like their real life counterparts.  There's... Something more there.  An essence.  Like drawing pure emotion.

I want to be able to do that.