CONTORTED PASTA

I was all prepared to write up the last in the series, but then last night this link landed in my lap, and I had to share it with you:
Austin Kleon on How to Steal Like an Artist ... very inspiring and honest stuff there, about creative people, how they work, their 'secrets,' etc. It's quite long but worth every minute spent reading.

I still want to share my last thoughts, though, so lucky you, you get a twofer! This isn't exactly art advice, more a general life thing, but I find it comes in most handy when considering creative work.

When I was growing up, if there was something that I wanted to do, but I grumbled about how hard it was at any step of the way, my dad would say something along the lines of 'Well, maybe you should give it up, it clearly doesn't matter very much to you.' This was a clever bit of goading that usually got me past the grumbling and put my nose to the grindstone again.

Ever since then, when faced with a daunting impediment, I have asked myself 'How much does it matter to you?' Usually it matters enough to find a way to get downtown every day during a bus strike, to book last-minute plane tickets to the UK, to give up everything I loved about living in Canada to do 2D animation, and any number of smaller things along the way. It's a good way to step back and keep things in perspective, when you might be distracted by petty cares.
Which matters more to you?
- being close to your high school friends or going to the college you want to go to, far away?
- a career that pays well or one that is rewarding in less tangible ways?
- being free of momentary embarrassment or talking to the boy you have a crush on?
- getting your project done on time or getting a full night's sleep?
- the fear of drawing attention to yourself or the expertise you will gain by carrying a sketchbook everywhere?

There may not be a wrong answer to any of them, but in twenty years when you look back on this decision, which option will you regret more?

When it comes to solid drawing, you just don't get better than Glen Keane. Luckily Mark Kennedy shares with us some handouts Glen did on the subject a while back.

Preach it, Glen!

EDIT: Fixed that link (sorry) and felt a bit guilty about such a low-content entry so, here, have Mr Kennedy's post on Expressive Poses as well!

In a previous entry I mentioned the phenomenon of burnout, and how a professional must soldier on regardless of whether or not they want to do what they're doing. Burnout is, unfortunately, a standard part of every creative profession I know of; creating takes a lot more mental energy and emotional involvement than just putting numbers in boxes, and this can be exhausting. Keep pushing through the exhaustion, and you end up damaging the underlying enthusiasm that kept you going in the first place. Sometimes this leaves you feeling like you've had it, that you can't do this anymore; some people get it so bad that they leave their artistic careers forever and take up forensic accounting or something. Burnouts can range anywhere from 'disinterest' to 'fierce hatred' towards your line of work, and likewise can take varying degrees of effort to overcome. Some are so severe they cannot be overcome. The aim of this post is to keep you from getting to the latter.

There are two important things to remember about burnouts:

1. They are natural
2. They don't have to be permanent

Now, if you're doing this for a living, you can't just throw up your hands and say 'That's it! I can't do any more work, I'm burnt out!' – that is called 'being a temperamental flaky artist,' and they're unlikely to hire you back again. You have to learn to work around, through, and over the burnouts if you're going to make a career of this.

( Some Hints )

1. This one's easy and probably best for minor blockages: Try drawing with your non-dominant hand. I find this works a treat when I'm struggling with a caricature and I feel like I keep drawing the same (wrong) thing over and over, when I can feel how it ought to be in my mind.

2. Ban yourself from drawing your own stuff for a few days and throw yourself into studying other people's artwork – copying while thinking about what you're drawing can teach you a lot, and learning how other people approach design problems and express themselves can give you tools you might not have had before. It also sort of resets your muscle memory, as you are drawing unfamiliar shapes and speaking someone else's visual language.

3. A change is as good as a rest – sometimes you come up dry because you've emptied the well and you need to let the groundwater seep in again. Go for a walk out in nature and take your sketchbook; draw anything and everything that catches your eye, be it a flower, a shrub, the ridgeline of distant mountains, whatever, but NOT whatever it is you normally draw. Try to create a nice landscape study, maybe. Play with composition. Sometimes inspiration can sneak in without you even knowing it. (Of course if you normally draw nature stuff, this is obviously bad advice.)

4. Try changing tools. A tool that does not allow you to make a 'pretty' drawing, or one that is too imprecise to put your line exactly where you want it, will force you to concentrate on other things and will free you up a lot (no matter how frustrating it might be to start with). Try sharpie, chalk, fountain pen, fingerpaint, crayon, a stick in the sand, ketchup on a plate, whatever. Then, when you finally go back to your regular tool that does what you tell it to do, WOW! So easy!

You have an artist you admire and want to learn how they do what they do, but how do you learn to draw like them?

The simple answer is: trace trace trace, copy copy copy. But you can't just blindly duplicate the lines, you have to have your brain turned on while you're doing so or you won't learn anything. Try to think about ( the following things: )

Once you've studied a wide cross-section of the artist's work, try creating your own drawings in that artist's style. Try to make it look like that artist drew it, like you've uncovered a new piece of art by this person that no one had seen before. Forgery is fun, and educational! (Purely for learning purposes, you understand.)

And remember: LEARN FROM A WIDE VARIETY OF ARTISTS. You can be the best Mignola mimic in the world, but the world already has a Mignola! Make your own unique blend of influences!

If you want some informative examples of how other people have dissected artists' styles, the following 'Art of' books have style guides in them, though you may need a jeweler's loupe to read some of the text:
Fantasia 2000 (for Al Hirschfeld)
Hercules (for Gerald Scarfe – 'the swoop with a sudden reversal is a key Scarfe line!')
Mulan
Lilo & Stitch (for Chris Sanders)
I'm pretty sure I've seen Atlantis' somewhere before, but I don't think it was in the art book. Special Edition DVD maybe?

Before I start, a notification:

THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LIFE DRAWING. It is a supplement only.

Got that? Continuing.

Another useful way to use the stop-frame feature on your DVD player is to draw from live action films. If you're studying something in particular for animation this is the prime example of going straight to the source (rather than copying off someone else's interpretation of reality), but it can be useful for other artists as well. The thing about frames of film, as opposed to still photographs, is that you can see the forces and action at play. Why is the arm posed like it is? Because it's in the middle of swooping down from over here. Why is the person's spine bent one way instead of the other? Because they are going from this pose to that pose, or because the forces moving them flow through the spine in that way. And by stepping through the frames you can see this happen. It adds a lot of information to your drawing to know what came before and after, even if you're not animating it, and there's no better example of a frozen moment in time than a frame of film.

It's also a good way of studying costume, and the way clothes react to the body and motion. Not as good as the real thing, but some places don't do costumed life drawing ...

Wait, I think I need a reminder:

THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LIFE DRAWING.

That said, when you are drawing from a still frame, treat it like a life drawing: build it from the inside out and try to get it down as quickly as possible, to keep the life and spontaneity in it. When you're working off an image with no time limit, the temptation to get every detail exact and render it up all pretty-like can be overbearing, but then it just becomes copying a photo. But most importantly, remember it has volume. It might look like a flat image on your screen but you need to convince yourself it is a three-dimensional object, and draw it as such.

The ability to draw a wide number of things realistically improves not only the drawings you make, but your actual imagination!

Aaron Diaz Explains

Thanks to Raddishh for posting this link on Kadi's blog where I saw it and stole it. :)

I've written a lot about drawing people, but today I have to touch upon our animal friends. Chances are at some point you will need to draw an animal so it's a good idea to be fairly familiar with them in general. Once again, there's really no way to get there other than just to draw them. People think this means going to a zoo, and it is certain that zoos are a great place to see a lot of different interesting animals in one location, but saying you can only learn to draw animals at a zoo is like saying you can only learn to cook in a fancy restaurant. Good old homestyle animals can teach you a lot, too! Chances are you or someone you know has a cat or dog – those will teach you about how quadrupeds work. You might know someone with a pet bird, or live close to a park in which there are ducks or geese, or live near the sea and have gulls and crows readily at hand, and everywhere has pigeons. You might have to travel a bit to find an ungulate, but if there's a petting zoo, stable, pony ride, or living history farm nearby, you've got a good resource for hoofed mammals. Reptiles, fish, amphibians, and arthropods are a bit harder to find, but also tend not to be so in-demand for drawings, so you can wait until you find yourself with access to a zoo to add those to your repertoire, or try to learn as much as you can from videos and books.

The key to successful animal drawing is to understand how the animal is built and how that comes into play in the pose you are drawing. Animals very rarely are so courteous as to stand still long enough for you to draw them, so you have to jot down a rough sketch of the pose as quickly as possible (the Bradbury Snapshot comes in handy here), then build information and details on that as you collect them from that animal as it goes about its business. The muscles and surface features will stay in the same place no matter what the animal is doing, all you have to do is take what you see in whatever position they're in now and apply it to the pose you drew before. In order to do this, you have to know some basics of their anatomy, so before you go drawing, do a bit of research. You can probably find some decent animal anatomy books at the library – I know DK puts out some useful stuff so check the J section too – or you can take the plunge and look up Muybridge's Animals in Motion, which is still one of the most exhaustive studies of animal anatomy in practise.

While the zoo is fun, your everyday sources of animal interaction can give you a good grounding in the different 'makes' of animal. If you know how to draw a bird, a quadruped carnivore, an ungulate, or even better, a couple from each group, you can use research and observation to learn how different species use the same basic structure in slightly different ways.

Also, don't limit yourself to doing anatomical drawings. See if you can also capture some of their body language; try to capture what they might be thinking or feeling. That really makes them come alive, rather than being furry/feathery/scaly robots of different shapes and sizes.

So you've gotten into an animation school ... now what?

THE PAIN!

I mean, um, learning. A lot. All in one go. You ready?

Luckily I came to the realisation fairly early in my college education that the more I put into school, the more I got out of it. It was possible to complete my assignments to an acceptable standard with a minimum of effort, but I learned more when I went the extra mile, even if what I learned was 'you have bit off more than you can chew.' That is a valuable lesson too! And of course it applies to any creative discipline, not just animation.

I think the assignment I learned this on was a toddler walk. I had roughed in some animation that was perfectly adequate, but I had a bit of spare time, so I decided I was going to give the toddler some ponytails and a little skirt, and tie down all the drawings. I still got it done on time without too much lost sleep, but I learned so much more about secondary action and draughtsmanship (and what I was capable of) than I would have if I'd left it at the bald generic toddler I'd had originally. Humans are inherently lazy – most of our greatest inventions come from our fundamental desire not to do things the hard way – so it's very easy to fall into the trap of 'good enough.' After realising how much I learned from that walking toddler, I put a little sign on my desk that read '"Good enough" is not good enough!' As it was only for internal consumption I knew I didn't mean it in that damaging, overbearing perfectionist kind of way, but rather simply that if I settled for the least I could do, I would get much less out of my precious little time spent in this institution. 'Good enough' should be your fallback position! Shoot for the stars! You can always come back to 'good enough,' but you'll be bringing with you the wisdom you've gained from the cosmos.

I was lucky enough to work with James Baxter for a few months, a few years ago, with a group of other young animators. If you are not familiar with his work ... well, you probably are, you just don't know it. Here's a short YouTube compilation of some of his rough animation. (Yes, that is rough animation.) He has a distinctive way of drawing (besides 'perfect,' I mean) in which the lines don't look like big swoops but like someone breaking a trail through snow, as the pencil scrubs its way along its intended path. You have to get in pretty close to see it, and the only high-enough-res example I've been able to find online is a drawing of Belle and the Beast, which doesn't show it quite as strongly as some of his work in The Art of Hunchback, for example. One of my fellow acolytes asked him why he drew with that distinctive 'hairy' line, and he answered that it was because he didn't have the fine motor control to make quick gestural strokes go where he wanted them to.

( On the Division between Draughtsmanship and Fine Motor Control )

Didn't get this up on Saturday, I apologise ... it's been a busy weekend.