More Donald Duck Drawings

More Donald Duck Drawings, originally uploaded by sakraft1.

I draw some more Donald Duck from model sheets. Hands are hard, esp. cartoon duck hands, esp. cartoon duck hands drawn by Disney animators...

Donald

Donald, originally uploaded by sakraft1.

The trick to Donald is that his beak is really squared off kinda. Before I really understood the structure of Donald's beak, my drawings looked awful. When he is angry, his eyes are more like triangles than ovals. And he always has messy hair, which is more interesting than a plain round head. I really appreciate all the work that those animators put into Donald, he is pretty detailed for a major character. Oh yeah, and those eye arches extend above the top of his head.

On learning to draw

A friend of mine mentioned she wanted to take some art classes. The Nassau County Museum of Art is where my Mom takes drawing and painting classes (she has for over 20 years!) and its also where I took figure drawing and where I occasionally go to workshops.

There are also classes offered by the Art League of Long Island.

And then there is always the internet. There are tons of great blogs out there that I know of that offer free learning materials for people who want to draw. It is also great to look at the blogs of various artists/illusrators/cartoonists to study how they find solutions to various creative challenges. There are also tons of books. Jack Hamm has some great books about drawing all different kinds of subjects.

Don't read too much though. That is to say, spend more time drawing! Reading is good but you have to draw if you want to learn how. Practice also builds muscle memory into you hand, wrist etc. in the same way that athletes train their bodies.

The one piece of advice I can give you is this: anyone can learn to draw well (people that are supposedly born with 'talent' are probably rarer than a turquoise chipmunk, anyone can develop talent through practice). I don't draw too well because I don't practice. Even people who are exceptionally good have off days where they can draw well. Warm-up helps, like doing some quick sketching to loosen up (again, the athlete analogy works here). When you first set out to learn to draw, you (probably) won't like what your drawings look like when you first start. To be any good takes a lot of hard work and patience. Not everyone who can draw can draw everything. I know some people who are great at illustration or other kinds of drawing not great at realistic figure drawing (which is really really hard). I'm pretty terrible at it myself, but I don't let that stop me. I guess that's more than one piece of advice. Oh, and also its great to have a sketch book with you at all times. Sketch's aren't finished works of art, they are mostly for experimentation, which is how you learn to draw. I guess the one piece of advice is don't be discouraged if you don't find success immediately.

Just start drawing!

More Squash and Stretch + Facial Expressions

Squash and Stretch on the Head

I am finding that I have to do warm-ups, like in figure drawing or running track. My first bunch of drawings at the begining of a session are really bad, then they get better as I loose myself in the drawing.

Taking lessons from John K and Preston Blair

Head construction. Yeah, that looks good. But I wasn't drawing that well a few hours ago. I think I learned the concept of the Head Construction spread quite well, but it took a couple of sheets of paper (and I should probably do more) to grasp what was really going on. The main points to hammer into your head are perspective, solid construction and placement of features. My heads were getting good and solid and tight by the time in stopped about half an hour ago. You learn more stuff the more you do it. Doing it is definetly better than reading about it.

Click Here to see my the full page of "More Head Construction." If you must, click here for my first page of Head Construction.

John K's Animation School Revisited

The wikipedia article on John K no longer has the convenient list of links to his animation lessons, so here you go:

John K's Animation School Lessons
Lesson 1:Construction of the head
Lesson 2:Squash and Stretch on heads
Lesson 3:How to check your copies-Proportion
Lesson 4: Legged Characters
Lesson 5: Line Of Action, Silhouettes
Lesson 6:Construction of the head (Advanced)
Lesson 7:When Generic is a Good Thing
Lesson 8: Proportions affect design-Contrasts
Lesson 9: Hands-Simplifying complicated things
Color Theory
Color Theories for Cartoons- Garish versus Warm
Color Theory: Pee and Poo colors versus Colorful Greys
Color Theory- look at the sky before you paint a sunset
Color Theory- good color without a lot of money - Art Lozzi HB
Color Theory - does cost equal quality?
Color Theory - eye relief
Color Theory - steal from anime if you can't think of anything yourself
Color Theory - neutral or natural colors
Color Theory- Art Lozzi - Interview - Early Days At Hanna Barbera
Color and BG Painting Reference-Old Golden Books
Color Theory-Art Lozzi on Bob Gentle-Skeeter Trouble
Art Lozzi- scooter looter-paint technique-BG painting
Color Theory- Art Lozzi explains some technique
Color Theory- color isolated from detailed technique-Yogi Bear "High Fly Guy", 1958
Composition
COMPOSITION For Layout and BG artists - part 1 - Framing
Composition 2 - Intersection
COMPOSITION 3 For Layout and BG artists - Clear Staging
Composition 4 - Staging Groups Of Characters
Composition 5 - EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CONCEPT! Negative VS Positive space
Composition 6- Avoid The Middle, Asymmetry is more natural and interesting
Composition 7 - compose your poses together - also very important!
COMPOSITION 8 For Layout and BG artists - form over detail, lettering, study other artists