What's So Damn Funny?

Humour is very important to me.  Being funny is a great way to become my best friend, my favourite teacher or even to get into my pants.  For realz.  My first husband was a stand-up comedian.  THE MARRIAGE WAS A JOKE.  Ba dum dum.

No really, trufax.  I've always crushed on funny guys.  To me, Bill Murray is sexier than Brad Pitt will ever be.  Sadly, funny does not make a good husband, so we parted ways. 

My new husband is funny, but also responsible and employable.  But enough about my life choices, let's talk about funny as it applies to art.

Generally, to ellicit a laugh, you need a premise, a set up and a banana peel surprise.  Sort of a bait and switch, but this can be difficult with a one panel drawing, especially without dialogue.

Much of my humorous art is parody.  Drawing something funny is easier when someone else has done the premise for you.  If you understand the world of Harry Potter, and know that Doloris Umbridge is a castrating bitch, it's easy to put her (or someone else) in a situation with her that is funny.  And naked is alwasy funnier!

It also helps if you can empathize with the characters.  We all feel a bit like Dumbledore's wand here.
Barfing kittens can't hurt either.

Knowing what a port-key does is tantamount to understanding this one.  I like this one because the funny part hasn't happened yet.  IT HAS HUMOUR POTENTIAL.  We all have sex, and we all don't EVER want our mothers to see us doing it.

Putting people in unlikely situations is fun.

And having people do things that are against their character can elicit a laugh.  I honestly don't know why naked Abe Lincoln is so funny, but this quick doodle I made never fails to crack me up.

Getting caught doing something that is totally IN your character can be funny too.  Nobody could love Gilderoy Lockheart as much as himself.

And Evil Scientist/Platypus sex is the pinnacle of funneh.

 Well, to me, at least.  But I have the sense of humour of a twelve year old boy. ;)

Bottom line, what I find funny, you may not, and vice versa.  But I'm Canadian, and we certainly have our own special brand. ;)

The Forty Things We Share

Fingers and toes.  Hands and feet.  The bane of many artist's exsistence, and yet, they don't often give me trouble.  (except, if you check my last post, I seem to have *cough* given Metro Man two  right hands.  durrr)

I'm not great at drawing hands without references, and I've been known, on long boring plane rides to use my camera phone to photograph my own hands, so that I can draw them properly.  Sadly, I have ugly, chubby, short stumpy hands.  They work well, the've given me hours of pleasure ;) but they are SO not photogenic.  I also make my husband pose as a hand model for me too.  He has nice hands.  But it really doesn't matter, I can ugly up fingers, or lengthen or shorten, or even change the colour, if need be.

Yup, Dumbledore has hubby's hands!! :D
Hands add so much to any picture.  They are very expressive, and can often convey the 'truth' of a picture, when the main subject matter is not so forthcoming.  Sometimes they are the ENTIRE picture, and sometimes they just help to 'ground' it.

 Even when they are just a small part of it, I often get compliments on the hands, or the placement of them, or *gasp* a wedding ring, when two characters are not in a canon relationship. :D

I wish I could say that there is an easy trick to drawing them, but there isn't.  When I don't have a reference, drawing them as cylindrical shapes helps, and varying the lengths and angles of each etc etc, but my non ref hands are pretty shitty, so I shouldnt' be giving advice on them.

 Draw what you see.  Don't worry that they're hands, they're no different than a nose, or lips or a pair of ears.  They're just shapes and shadows like the rest of the body.

And feet!  Oh god I love drawing feet.  (I suck at drawing shoes, however, but I'm working on it.)
Snarry feet was one of my most popular drawings evah on deviantArt (until being forcibly deleted for PORNOGRAPHIC CONTENT of a minor.)  But that's a totally different post, trust me.  And looking back at this piece, it's really pretty crappy, compared to any of my new stuff, but it tells a story.  A sexy story!  And it sort of IS pornographic, even though all we see are toes and ankles and heels, but they promise so much more.  And that one curled big toe tells more about Snape's true nature (or what  I'd LIKE to believe about Snape's true nature) than any curled lip or eyebrow.

And like hands, feet add so much detail  and expression to a drawing.

Bottom line, don't fear them, embrace them!  Stretch yourself as an artist, and you'll improve from it.

Shazam!

Okay, if I can manage the html here, I might be able to actually post something.

Let's talk about art!  Or, more specifically MY art, because, ... it's the only type of art I'm qualified to discuss.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I wanted to be a comic book artist.  Not for realz, of course, but I wanted to EMULATE that style, because despite my life long apathy towards superheroes, I've gained a sudden appreciation for well hung Metro Bear musclebound good guys, due to my recent obsession with Megamind. 

I'd done a fair bit of cross hatching in the past,

But nothing like the strong, bold lines that Marvel is famous for.  And when I went to MAKE said bold lines, it was MUCH more difficult that I would have imagined!  It would seem that I see the world in a thousand shades of grey.  My first attempt was thus:

It's not horrible, but also not as bold as I'd hoped.  Yestersay, I made this one:

I think I'm happier with it, but still not thrilled.  I had a hard time separating what the ACTUAL colours were, from where the shadows are.  Meaning, Megamind wears black, so my brain wanted to colour him all black.  Except, yeah, hello?  Light and shadows people.  I'm sure this will take a lot longer for my brain to process, and the only thing to do is DRAW MOAR.  Oh, and colour stuff.

One word.  BULGE. :D

Oh, for inks I used a .5 Micron pen, and the bolder lines are a 1. pen.  I also used a brush pen for the larger areas.