CONTORTED PASTA

Whoops! I thought I'd posted this but it turns out I'd only draughted it in my head. It's been one of those weeks.

I keep saying 'this is a short one' but this really is a short one.

DRAUGHTSMANSHIP EXERCISE!
Draw a vertical line, as straight as you can, down your page – try to make it at least as long as your pinky finger. Now draw another one as close as possible to your first line without touching it, continuing down in parallel, ending at the same place. Repeat, until you have a square of vertical lines.

Now do the same with horizontal lines.

Now do the same with vertical and horizontal, but moving your pencil in the opposite direction as you did before.

Between reps you can spice it up with a whole bunch of circles! Hundreds of circles! As circular as you can!

This is a very boring exercise, I know. But I have found it helps with fine motor control, which leads to more precise linework. It's a bit too mind-numbing to devote one's whole attention to it, but you can do it while on the phone or watching TV, or when you're too burnt out to draw anything more creative but need to keep your pencil moving.

I know copying anime/manga is a tremendously popular pasttime for many young artists. This is not necessarily a bad thing: manga artists have an profound grasp of anatomy and drapery, and if you can say anything about the country that brought us giant robots fighting each other long before the invention of CG, it's that they have draughtsmanship to die for.

The problem comes in how people think about the art they are copying. A lot of the line work in anime is very subtle. If you know what is going on in that leg, or that sleeve, you can see how the line describes it, but it is very easy for the ignorant to blast away that detail or not realise what it signifies, rendering the drawing flat, sucking out a lot of the information, and, most importantly, not learning as much as they could. This gets even worse when you get into faces, which are the most stylized part of the anime style and arguably the most important part of one's drawing. People tend to copy the shapes without understanding what is going on: they make a sort of lopsided trapezoid for the face, drop on some gigantic flat eyes, throw in a little triangle nose somewhere between them, and a graphic symbol for the mouth. This mimics the style quite well, so they think they've 'got it,' but what they don't realise is that the style they are copying is a vast simplification of an incredibly complex idea. If you really want to understand the simplification, you have to know what it was simplifying from, and not just think of it as a collage of shapes and features from a stock library.

If you're planning to have a career in animation and you are a manga fan, don't worry! Two of the most amazing animators/artists/draughtsmen I know started in exactly the same place as you. You just have to deepen your understanding of the art you're imitating, beyond the surface likeness. It would also serve you well to dabble in other styles, as schools and employers who get a portfolio full of anime will think that's all you can draw, and as most Western productions are in a different style, they may not think you are up to it. Chances are you won't find a job animating in Japan, so you'll have to learn how to give them what they want even if it's not the style you prefer when drawing on you own time.

Less than a week in and I'm already behind!

I promised myself when I started this that I wouldn't make this a general 'how to draw' series ... it is, somewhat, but there are lots of existing 'how to draw' resources out there. It would probably be good to share some of them, eh?

When I was in high school there weren't many animation books out there – I seem to have been at the leading edge of a generation that grew up on Disney's renaissance in the 90s and wanted to become animators, but most of the really helpful books were published after I left school.

The books I relied on most heavily before going to college were: ( My Animation Reading List )

I made up this little tutorial in the last semester of college, when I really had no time to be doing so. This, I believe, is proof of the adage 'If you want something done, give it to someone who is busy.' You may recognise it from my How to Draw page ... or not, because the link to it is pretty well-hidden on my site. No reading ahead! (Unless you want to.)

Anyway, it's not perfect, but it gets the idea across.

( CONSTRUCTING THE HEAD – with illustrations! )

I'm not going to do a Lenten Sketchbook it this year because a)I have all day to draw my own stuff anyway and b)my sketchbook has smaller pages. Anyway, there are only so many polar explorers the internet can take.

I get lots of emails asking about art, how to improve at it, and how to get into animation, so I thought it would be beneficial to establish a public compendium of advice, at least as far as I am capable of giving. Please be advised that I am far from being the definitive expert on this stuff — I only have my personal experience to go on, and tips I've picked up from people along the way, but I cannot guarantee they will work for everyone, or indeed that they are right at all. You are welcome to discuss and debate in the comments! The more input the better.

In order to fill up the whole forty days, which at this point is daunting, I'm going to work forwards from the very beginning, or at least what I can remember from the time when I first started taking drawing seriously. Not only does this start at square one, but it has the benefit of being How to Learn to Draw on a Minimum of Funds — no expensive art supplies or technology required! Just paper, pencils, a library, and a lot of time.

The first thing I did, as a fourteen-year-old under house arrest* in the blazing hot summer, was a lot of tracing.
*not actually; it's called 'suburbia'

( TRACING )

Tomorrow: Basic facial construction!

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to become less than completely crap at watercolour. I'd like to be able to do watercolour sketches while travelling, but in order to get anything that isn't embarrassing you've got to be comfortable with the medium, which means practise, practise, practise.

( Practise )

I am up to my eyeballs in two separate projects which are both due Friday, hence the content-less updates (usually done over a meal) and extreme lack of replying to email, but all in all it's very exciting!

One of my projects sent me on a reference hunt over the weekend, and the search term "alcohol blast-lamp" found me THIS:

The Oesper Collections in the History of Chemistry, University of Cincinnati
A whole library of fantastic items from labs in the bygone days of yor-e-gon-e-bye! Each item has a rotating photo! There's a virtual tour of a c.1900-10 chemistry lab! MY EYES! IT'S TOO AWESOME!! AAAAAAAaaaaaaauuuuugh!

And if you can guess what project it is that I was researching, you get a shiny gold star. I should be back to "normal" by Monday (by which I mean, of course, taking forever to reply to email for no good reason at all).

So awesome...

Evening, all ...

In case anyone around here is to be left shuttered in their dark little house tonight, with nothing to do but stare at the scraggly trees blowing in the moonlight, awaiting the knock of scurrilous little children whose sole interest is extracting candy from you, I have some entertainment that may lessen the anguish and stay your hand from ... fouler deeds.

First! The League of Gentlemen reunite and spend the night in one of the most haunted houses in Britain in The League of Gentlemen's Ghost Chase. Listen to it with the lights out, I dare you! (But make sure you do it before Thursday.)

Second! His Face All Red by Emily Carroll – besides being gorgeously drawn and coloured, this webcomic is probably the most webby comic I have seen, with cunning awareness of navigation by scrolling and links.

The rule of threes dictates a third, climactic link, but alas it was too dreadful and terrifying to unleash on the world. So I shall leave the triptych incomplete, and invite the wrath of narrative convention on my head.

... Happy Hallowe'en ...

The famous Nine Old Men of Disney* (and any number of less glorified but still talented assistants, etc) made a habit of looking at the Sports section of the newspaper for great dynamic poses that they could deconstruct and use to enhance their drawings. Today, we have the internet! Here, in one place, is a large collection of great poses!

Check out the action lines on these puppies! Phwaaar!

And more here, from other matches...

The expressions ain't half bad either.


*who are continually exalted in-house but whose well-documented curriculum of lifelong study and self-improvement is rarely followed, ahem AHEM. [glare]

Behold the glory of JIN KIM'S SWEENEY.

Yes. Yes. That is it.

By the way, I sure hope this is all just a flood of traffic slowing things down because if not, your new servers are pretty crummy, LJ.