art lessons

Famous Artist Cartoon Course available as free PDF

Art

“So what is the Famous Artists Cartoon Course? Imagine Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but written by a dozen of the most successful commercial artists of the 1950s about the skills you need to cut it as a professional cartoonist. It is 18 chapters, 390 pages, on 8.5×11″ paper. There is approximately a 70:30 ratio of space taken up by text versus pictures (it’s a legit textbook).”

Artists, y’all need to buzz on over to this post on Random Nerds and get this marvelous textbook FOR FUH-REE-HEE.

 

 

 

 

Creativity Lessons from 2018: Improve your art with EDGES

Art

Art is design.

One important component of design is the kind of edges you choose to render.

Here’s a pic from ConceptArt.org’s Paintovers for Posterity that’s been of great use to me

Image of a viking, with the 4 kinds of edges and values pointed out

Paying attention to these kinds of edges doesn’t just help me render different textures…it helps me lead the eye around my work. Hard and firm edges tend to draw the eye towards them (and the clearer the edging/shape read, the friendlier an overall composition is; hence why children’s images and cartoons are so well lit), while lost edges add mystery and tension. Good times!

Writing

nicolasrix:

@curdalert, asked me a few weeks ago, 

“How do you approach figure drawing?”

While this isn’t really figure drawing in the traditional sense. This is just me trying to show how I see the human form, how I simplify things for myself to understand enough to move past all the bullshit and difficulty of drawing.

I’m by no means an expert in anatomy. I don’t know all the ins and outs of every damn bone, ligament or muscle. It’s all too much. A lot of this learned from sifting through tutorials and browsing the internet. 

But figure drawing itself in the traditional sense is more about capturing the form. The force and flow of a pose. But I do keep a lot what I’m showing here in mind when I’m drawing from memory. I should however be doing a lot more life drawing, which is like zero at the moment. What I’m showing here can help de-mystify the human form a bit. 

So basically, this little tutorial I threw together is really about these 3 SHAPES and how everything is a mix of those 3 shapes. No magic. No abiding by rules of how many heads fit into a body. It’s all just shapes.

Hope this helps. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please send me more questions and I’ll do my best to answer them 🙂

Writing

nicolasrix:

@curdalert, asked me a few weeks ago, 

“How do you approach figure drawing?”

While this isn’t really figure drawing in the traditional sense. This is just me trying to show how I see the human form, how I simplify things for myself to understand enough to move past all the bullshit and difficulty of drawing.

I’m by no means an expert in anatomy. I don’t know all the ins and outs of every damn bone, ligament or muscle. It’s all too much. A lot of this learned from sifting through tutorials and browsing the internet. 

But figure drawing itself in the traditional sense is more about capturing the form. The force and flow of a pose. But I do keep a lot what I’m showing here in mind when I’m drawing from memory. I should however be doing a lot more life drawing, which is like zero at the moment. What I’m showing here can help de-mystify the human form a bit. 

So basically, this little tutorial I threw together is really about these 3 SHAPES and how everything is a mix of those 3 shapes. No magic. No abiding by rules of how many heads fit into a body. It’s all just shapes.

Hope this helps. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please send me more questions and I’ll do my best to answer them 🙂

Writing

nicolasrix:

@curdalert, asked me a few weeks ago, 

“How do you approach figure drawing?”

While this isn’t really figure drawing in the traditional sense. This is just me trying to show how I see the human form, how I simplify things for myself to understand enough to move past all the bullshit and difficulty of drawing.

I’m by no means an expert in anatomy. I don’t know all the ins and outs of every damn bone, ligament or muscle. It’s all too much. A lot of this learned from sifting through tutorials and browsing the internet. 

But figure drawing itself in the traditional sense is more about capturing the form. The force and flow of a pose. But I do keep a lot what I’m showing here in mind when I’m drawing from memory. I should however be doing a lot more life drawing, which is like zero at the moment. What I’m showing here can help de-mystify the human form a bit. 

So basically, this little tutorial I threw together is really about these 3 SHAPES and how everything is a mix of those 3 shapes. No magic. No abiding by rules of how many heads fit into a body. It’s all just shapes.

Hope this helps. If there’s anything else you’d like to know, please send me more questions and I’ll do my best to answer them 🙂