How To Suck Like Me

I know a lot of people who stress over their drawings, and will make any additions on onion-skin paper, to avoid making mistakes and having to start over again.  To those people I say:  Dude!  If you drew it once, you can draw it again!  It (and you) will most likely be better for it.

For example, let's look at one of my latest drawings.  A friend I call 'The Colonel', requested Megamind and Metro Man having a relaxing 'fly' together.  Just sort of a buddies chilling out type feel.  The initial sketch is fine.  Not a ton of detail, but with pastels I tend to add them later.

Sadly, I didn't have my chunky pastels with me, only the pencils, but I made do, filling in the sky area, careful not to cover the 'boys.'

It was at this point that I became very unhappy with how it was looking.  I was already fighting with the many layers of pastel in the background and was having trouble making my lines clean.  Plus his leg was looking too skinny etc etc etc.  TRASH CAN!

Back at home, I got some black paper and started anew.  I thought it would be easier to lighten up the dark, than to darken up all the light of the white paper.  I like this sketch a lot better too.  Megz looks much more relaxed, and he seems to fit better on Metz' lap.

Filling in the blocks of colour with the sticks, careful to not be too messy.  This picture is on 12x18 paper, and pretty much goes from end to end.  In fact, I've cut Metz' toes off.  Poor guy.

More colour blocking and adding shadows.  I have no idea if this is how you're SUPPOSED to work with pastels, but this is the way *I* do.

Megz' costume.  I have to say, it is SO fun to highlight when working on black paper.  I was originally going to make them flying at dusk, and was going to lighten up the background a bit, but the more I drew on the black, the more I knew it would be night, and they'd be illuminated by an off-screen moon.

Here's the almost finished version.  I've skipped a step, and I apologize, but it was late and I was so into getting this finished that I forgot to stop and take a photo before doing the black lines.

And here's the finished product.

It's not terribly different, but it's taken with an actual camera, as opposed to the crappy one on my phone, and I've added a few stars and tweaked the brightness and contrast.  Over all, I think it's a much better picture for my having started over partway through.

Ugly People

I love ugly people!  No really, I do.  Because they're not really ugly, they're ... differently beautiful?  Take Snape from the Harry Potter series.  He is certainly not described in flattering terms, but there are legions of fangirls (and boys) out there who would tap that and tap that hard!

Obviously someone did, since he seems to have a baby here. ;)  And Hagrid!  I have to admit, before I started drawing him, I had no love for the man.  But now?  I have a grudging admiration.  It's not easy being that hairy!

I have a love for most ugly characters.  Mostly because they are WAY more interesting to draw and look at than 'pretty' characters.

 Wrinkles, fat rolls, hair and snarly faces are a gift to artists.

  It really is a feat, to draw two less attractive characters, and make your audience fall in love with them anyway.

And goodness knows, that ugly people like sex too!  And they fall in love, deservedly so.

I like to make fun of everything.  I hope that my love of the characters shines through all of that though.  It's fun to take a person that seems to have only a couple of dimensions, and have them do something out of character for them.

 Sometimes it ends up being funny, and sometimes it shines a light on a part of them that people hadn't considered before.

Don't get me wrong, I like eye candy as much as the next person, but when it comes to drawing, I'll take someone odd looking over a super model any day.