Have You Caught Onto The Santa-Crock Hat Craze Yet?

Another horrific doctor's office doodle.

Self-Portrait

Principles of Drawing culminating assignment. White (and some black) Conte chalk and vine charcoal on grey paper. Exact dimensions unknown due to laziness. March/April 2011.

"Say, That IS a Great Idea!"

-Especially for those of us who don't wear clothes!

A sketch of the mighty Renwick I whipped off in a doctor's office a little while back. Executed in that most sensitive and understanding medium.....ballpoint pen!

Uh oh, copyright violation in progress- caaaalll the pol-EEEEEESE.......

Loopy Lazy Lickin' Lizzerd Lou

Colour & Water-Based Media assignment. Emphasis on warm/cool and light/dark value contrasts, complementary colours.

*BTW If it's of any interest I just remembered something about my process on this - I had actually meant to draw his eyes and the scales on his belly in correct perspective, unlike these flat ones that create the illusion of him leaning much more on his side than he's really supposed to be, but then I realized how much more difficult that is to paint without messy "line leakage", so I cheated it. Goes to show how mixing mediums at which one's skill levels differ from one to the other can have technical and even creative consequences. Anyway, I got a good mark. It wasn't about the drawing. I still kinda like it.

The Most Important Working Animator Today.....

http://vimeo.com/13085676

More on Calvin

Can you believe how much FEELING is in this drawing? And look how cleverly Watterson has reused the old "wheel feet" gag - instead of using it the way a lot of cartoonists do -in combination with a simple profile angle as an excuse to be lazy- he has drawn NON-REPRESENTATIONAL LEGS FROM BELOW IN PERSPECTIVE. I can't believe how clever that is!

I love how Calvin's expression above makes his statement even MORE horrible.....

Can you see the interesting use use of movement in this drawing? How about the sillos/neg. spaces?
Look how well drawn this is! Everything has the appropriate amount of weight. The angle is tricky, yet the perspective is extremely well represented. We can see that Calvin's features are wrapped around a clear shape - there is a subtle corner where the face and the side of the head separate into different planes, although the general, all-around shape is still basically round. Like a human head, Calvin's head is much narrower at the bottom, yet he doesn't always have an ultra-defined chin - only when his expression needs to be devilish like it does here. There is also an EXTREMELY important negative area on the upper-side of his head. Without this the expression would be totally unreadable. Calvin's overall line of action not only dictates his torso but also compliments the angle of his head, the direction of his eyes, the push of his shoulder and his grip of the balloon. the shape of the far side of his shirt frames the balloon. Together they form a curl of negative space that makes the drawing less cluttered and helps us see what Calvin is doing. The lack of detail on the balloon also contrasts with everything around it. It is easy to spot both of his hands even tough you can only see the fingertips on one of them. CLARITY!

Very subtle use of framing - look at the ball, the shape of his back, the direction of his eyes.

Opposing lines of action, clear use of space.

I love it when....

When word verifications resemble (or are) real words. A real example: "flurti". (BTW, why is the internet symbol for any kind of security the same as for wheelchair accessibility?! Something about that just isn't right...)

When I just keep refreshing the "post a comment" page on Vince Waller's blog and get a non-stop stream of randomly generated hilarious words. None have ever topped "pootomid", though.....