Recommanded blog: John Nevarez

There are some great draftsmen whose work is understandable to me. What I mean is, that when I look at their sketches, I can see how they did it - I can follow the way they use the various draftsmenship principles, and admire their excellence in putting it all together.

Then there are those whose work is a mystery to me. It's good, it's wonderful, but I can't figure out how they did it. I can't even figure out WHY it's so great. All I know is that I look at it and I love it. John Nevarez's work is a good example for that sort of stuff. Have a look:

John Nevarez's blog

Guy at a party

More doodles

My first "color key" ever!

This color sketch is the result of a nice sunny bicycle trip through the Amager woods. I was fascinated with the contrast between the sunny, dry, empty bicycle paths and the shadowy, moist atmosphere under the trees, swarming with bugs and birds and what-not . I looked at it for a long time, and the next morning I tried to capture my visual impression. I know it's very simple and very crude, but it's my very first success in capturing feeling with color, and I like it :).

KL caricature

During life-drawing sessions at work, it became something of a habit of mine to ease my brain for a while by attempting a caricature of one of my collegues. I'm not a very good caricaturist, so usually it's not really recognizable - but these "breather" drawings do tend to come out quite interesting and expresive, anyway.

This here is my friend and boss, KL. The big one is the first study (notice the concentrated life drawing expression...) which is always rather realistic and stiff. Then come the fun part! The lower left drawing is the one I like best. I don't think KL liked it much though...wonder why.

The form dog and the shape dog

Here is another copy of a Disney frame (Lady and the Tramp, of course). I think you'll agree that the lean dog on the left is much better than the bulldog in terms of solid draftsmanship. Fortunately I saved the drawing in it's most raw stage, after just a few line strokes had been made, and here it is:

This early stage shows a very interesting thing. While the bulldog here is basically a vague, undefined shape, the lean dog is already defined with forms. Obviously, I had approached the drawing with a pretty clear understanding of the lean dog's construction, and almost no understanding of the bulldog's.
[By the way, as a result of this lack of understanding, drawing the lean dog was easy and fun, while drawing the bulldog was frustrating and painstaking and felt like 'work'.]

Here you can see the work process I went through. You can see how much more trouble I had with the bulldog.

Well, you live you learn (and then you live on and learn the same thing over and over again, until hopefully, some day, you get tired of making the same mistake all the time and start doing it RIGHT).

Cheers.

Animation thumbnails

I spent a whole day doing some staggeringly boring and lifeless posing for this scene (in 3D). Luckily I came to my senses, realized what I was doing, deleted the file, and spent about half an hour sketching some thumbnails (sample above). Within another few hours, the scene became not only a hell of a lot better, but also more fun to work on. Repeat after me: I will think before I animate!