Dooz

A very fancy lion!

Cat-astrophe!

Come on Bats, it’s at least a little bit funny.

Sally took a spill.

Mrow!

No problem. I think I used the first brush in this pack for most of the piece: http://www.deviantart.com/art/MangaStudio-5-clip-studio-paint-brushes-pack2-370698012 Most of my paintings are done with basic oily brushes.

The haloing effect of the rain droplets hitting the umbrella and pavement was done with a inky splatter brush in conjunction with a fluffy air brush to suggest a haze. http://badbrushblog.tumblr.com/post/113198386012/a-sample-of-the-10-brushes-included-in-the

The raindrops were made with a generic brush. I made little dots in about a one inch strip and did a vertical blur filter in Photoshop to stretch them out.  I then duplicated the layer several times and staggered the placement so it looked more chaotic, as nature tends to be. The end result looked like a lot more work than it actually was.

Most of my work is done with brushes that simulate traditional mediums - namely oil, ink, airbrush, pencil, and pen. (Although I sometimes use what looks like lineart, I don’t put it on a separate layer. I paint it directly in with an oily brush.)

Don’t feel the need to use the same brushes as me, just use what feels organic to you. I work the way I do because everything else I tried looked terrible. :D

Left Turn at Albuquerque

It seems the Water Tribe does not navigate well by land.

Call Waiting.

Oh my gosh Diego, pay attention

I love big band and swing music, so when I came across this piece I just had to paint what popped into my head.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTQVWtSvwUE

I’m glad I could help!

Don’t feel bad about not understanding aspects of the figure. It’s extremely complicated, and nobody knows it all.  (Even Michelangelo hired models.)

I have massive gaps in my knowledge. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. But if there’s one thing I’ve come to understand, it’s that learning the figure isn’t one big achievement, its a million little “aha!” moments.

To draw the figure well, we have to be able to understand it in a fully three dimensional way. We won’t get that from looking at highly stylized artwork. It’s like making a xerox copy of a xerox copy - information gets lost in translation.

Making studies of good figurative artworks will definitely help with the issues you mentioned. Nothing fancy or grand, just make little grayscale copies. Avoid using lines; they won’t effectively teach you the true shape of things. Focus on the values, it is more important than color at this point. Use vine charcoal or black and white paints. Get away from a fine pencil and use something looser. Trust me on this one - Nobody could have hated hearing this more than I, but doing so began a huge leap in the quality of my art. Practicing this way will shave years off your learning curve.

I checked out your artwork, you’ve got a lot of great energy. That’s the good thing about cartoons and comics- they’re very lively. Because of my time spent drawing this way, my semi-realistic figures still retain that sense of energy. Once you gain a more robust understanding of the human form, I think you can really make your artwork sing. 

(Something also worth noting - draw the skeleton. Every part of the body is subservient to what the bones dictate, and in many places the bones protrude right out of the flesh.)

Here’s some resources that helped me:

ARTISTS: I recommend making studies of John Singer Sargent’s work. His figurative values are incredible; I’m studying his work now myself. Caravaggio is another of my favorites.

BOOKS: Drawing the head and figure by Jack Hamm (always my first recommendation)Color and Light by James Gurney (fantastic information about working with light)Force: Dynamic life drawing for animators by Michael D. Mattesi (No, I won’t shut up about this book, make me)

VIDEO:

Stan Prokopenko has really fantastic video resources for understanding anatomy. 

http://www.proko.com/

For the curious souls amongst you, here’s my process for painting high fashion Franziska.

1. CONCEPTUALIZE: This is a very important yet oft overlooked stage. Is the visual story worth telling? If you have a flawed, unclear, or uninteresting concept, your image will suffer.

I stumbled across some vintage fashion illustrations earlier this month and they made an impression on me. The combination of couture and snootiness reminded me of Franziska. I thought it would be fun to paint her in a similar style. It's not terribly deep or profound, but it's a fun concept. I scribbled the idea in a notepad for later. I'll forget if I don't; I have the memory of a goldfish.

2. RESEARCH: When I'm ready to start, I gather samples of work to try and understand the "look." What makes these pieces identifiable as fashion illustration? Here's a few things I picked out:

-elongated bodies -sparse settings -graceful -bold color/value -flowing gestures -ATTITUDE

Now I hire a professional model to assume the pose I'd like.

Just kidding, I'm broke. I use an full length mirror I found in the barn.

Here I experiment with various poses. I'm trying to find visually interesting ones that have strong lines of force. Exaggerate the pose a little bit. Subtleties can get lost in translation. You can always tone it down later. At this stage I'm starting to envision the image. This picture will be about two things: the flow of the figure, and strong values.

3. SKETCH: When I find a pose I like, I commit the main gestures to memory.  I then rush over and sketch out the most important gestures. 

I've decided on a pose with hips that strongly offset the shoulders. The angles oppose each other, which gives the image lots of energy. One of the most important parts of this pose is the flow around her shoulders that terminates in the whip. This is countered by the flow of her legs.

To demonstrate, here’s the final image with the lines of force highlighted. The red shows the primary forces at work. The blue shows the secondary ones. These complement the main forces by deviating slightly from their paths of trajectory.

When sketching, I literally trace these shapes with my finger to see if they're interesting. Visually dynamic angles should oppose each other. Try it!

I advise against using photo reference at this point. Reality is pretty bland and if you commit to a stiff pose now, there's no saving it. It's ok if there's anatomical inaccuracies at this point. What's important is the gesture.

My first thought was to put her against a dark background, so my first sketch was in white. I then changed my mind and put her against a dark background because I realized her white shirt would stand out the most when I wanted to accentuate the black items in her wardrobe. Oops.

4. PAINT: Now I start blocking in the main values. I use a high tech method for testing the strength of values: squinting. If a picture is still interesting to look at, you're good. Determining strong values is more important than accurate color at this point.

I go as far as i can without using my own photo reference. Sometimes I can get away with using none at all. It depends on the complexity of the pose. This one is a little complicated, as the posing of the arms is changed by the presence of the prop. I struggle with knees and feet as well, so I make a similar pose and take a photo to refer to. It's dangerous to your picture to follow too closely, so I use this as sparingly as possible and close out when I'm not using it. You can see here that it helped me to determine the weight shift onto the supporting leg.

Ok, I like where the values are going. Now I start introducing more accurate color.

Continue rendering.

Here I changed the hand. What was in my photo reference was boring; I like this much better. It seemed more graceful this way. When in doubt, pinky out!

I also have decided to paint the lines out. Fashion illustration usually does have a lot of line work, but I'm not completely chained to convention. It was just a starting point. I decide the picture looks better without it.

I'm almost done at this point, just a little clean up required. Beware of over rendering at this stage. It's better to stop early than to go too far. "Raw" work has tremendous energy and if you buff it out too much, it'll destroy the vitality. If you're feeling cautious, duplicate the painting and preserve the stage you're at in case things take a turn for the worse. This has saved my neck many times.

Aaaand Done! I try to resist the urge to noodle more details. It won't show, and will probably just make things stiffer.

For more information on getting "force" into your figures, check out Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators. It's the best book I've seen for getting good, energetic flow into your work. Cheers!

Unfoolishly Fabulous.

High fashion Franziska. She’ll frame you for murder and look good doing it.

I’ve uploaded a process walkthrough as well. http://doozigitis.tumblr.com/post/121856562217/franziska-process

Dear Anon:

I can try. Drawing human anatomy is probably the most complicated subject there is, so it's difficult to give a single piece of advice that encompasses the entire scope. Without seeing your work or knowing what your particular issues are, I'd have to give the usual unglamorous response of "practice practice practice."

But in my opinion, that can't be taken fully at face value, because it is very easy to practice the wrong way and stagnate or even make your work worse! (I know, because I did it for a long, long time.)

The solution is to practice with intent to improve. And unfortunately, this isn't fun. It requires making excessive studies from observation of things we need to improve on. To fully understand an object, we must draw it many many times from observation. Any artist worth his or her salt will have done loads of these - most, however, don't show this work. The polished gallery we see is just the tip of the iceberg. But behind it lies a mountain of messy, awkward scribbles. (Currently, I spend half my art-making time on studies that never see the light of day.)

My recommendation would be to go back to art history, find some artists whose work you like, and flat out copy their figures for practice. Start with renaissance artists like Michelangelo, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt - those guys were masters of the human figure and have stood the test of time. Copying each other is how they themselves learned. (It's how I'm learning!) Art history is full of "this guy making studies of that guy." They weren't too good to learn from duplicating, and neither are we. (A word of caution: if you do decide to copy from artists who are active now, don't post the work online. It's tacky. The work's for your own benefit, not to gain an audience. )

Fully copy the masters, values and all. Don't just draw lineart. It omits 90% of the information and will leave you oblivious of its true form. (Guilty of this myself.) Even if you draw in a simplified or stylized manner, you must know the rules before you can bend them. A good artist omits information on purpose, not out of ignorance. Learning to draw from  stylized source material (comics, anime, manga, etc.) may allow you to duplicate a visual style, but there will always be gaps in your knowledge because the artwork is already one step removed from reality. Most of the visual information is already omitted, so you're perpetually ignorant of it. I see this all the time, even in professionally made stuff. (I won't name any names. Rob Liefield.) Even famous artists like Picasso and Van Gogh who worked in a heavily stylized manner earned their right to do so by first learning to draw realistically from observation. Once learning the rules, they could deviate from them intelligently.

What's great about learning from the masters is that they've already done all the visual problem solving for you. They've figured out the gesture, the value, the color, everything. By copying the finished product, you can reverse engineer why and how the picture works. My favorite art teacher told me never to reinvent the wheel. The greats have already done the work for you, just stand on their shoulders and take what they know.

For example: The way I draw is Frankenstein'd together from several artists I admire. Google these guys and you'll see the similarities in my work.

Eyes/noses/paint application: JC LeyendeckerEars: John Buscema  (old Marvel comics)Head proportions/hands: Burne HogarthColor palates: Early 20th century american illustration

I didn't invent the way I draw figures on my own. I looked at the greats, took what I liked and add it to my repertoire. For more information on the virtues of artistic borrowing, check out the book "Steal like an artist" by Austin Kleon. I highly recommend it.

If you don't know where to start and just feel overwhelmed, pick a singular subject you struggle with like like feet or noses. Make several pages of copies. The next week, move onto a different body part you struggle with. Repeat.

Hope that helps, Anon! Best of luck to you.

Father’s Day: Part II

Father’s Day: Part I

Fatherhood is not for the insecure.

Cross My Heart.

My heroes have always been girls with guns.