Monday Morning Marty & Minnie -- One Defining Line

Which one's Marty and which one's Minnie?

Talk about simplification! This is a good exercise for artists to help define their characters, real or fictional, and help them distill the essence of their personalities: draw one line that best represents the person (or animal) concerned. Can you guess which one is Marty and which is Minnie? (I'm not sure I made the definitive lines for them, but this is a good start.)

Now, unlike other forms of simplification this one may or may not bear any visual resemblance to your subject, though it often can. Your line should bear as many of the same characteristics as your character's persona. Is your character swift or slow? Ambitious or lazy? Focused or all over the place? Honest or shifty? Smooth or awkward? Your subject's determining line should reflect that.

Now here's the payoff: when you draw your subject, try to use this defining line as often as you can. Look for places where the physical likeness and this defining line meet, and accentuate those points as much as you can. You'll have a portrait or a likeness that doesn't just convey the subject's look, but the subject's personality and character.

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Monday Morning Marty -- The Lap of Luxury!

(Click on image for larger version.)

Since the last two Monday Morning drawings were of Minnie, I figured Marty was due.

This was drawn with a Pigma Brush #1 pen. The drawing is based on a photo, though not traced. The photo was actually Marty luxuriating on my wife's lap while she was on her laptop, but I only wanted Marty in the image, so I used a little creative license. But normally he only looks this happy cuddled up to her.

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Monday Morning Minnie -- Fetch Girl Part 2

I know, I know -- I just drew Minnie last week, with a tennis ball, and with the title "Fetch, Girl." But really, she couldn't fetch to save her life then. We'd tried and tried, and all she ever did was gnaw on the felt of the tennis ball.

Well, this weekend the most unexpected thing happened. Minnie suddenly could fetch! She ran after the ball, picked it up, brought it back, and dropped it off in front of us, or even in our hands! It was remarkable, and deserved a commemoration.

My apologies to the estate of Dr. Seuss, but this is just how Minnie looks. It's not up to me.

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Tuesday Tutorial: How NOT to draw Silhouettes

(Click on image for larger version)

When you read most instructional books on drawing, the advice given about drawing silhouettes is usually: draw in your figure as if it's not going to be a silhouette, then silhouette the drawing.

That's terrible advice.

A silhouette has to convey all the usual information about a figure solely through the outline. If you draw in the whole figure you cannot tell if that information is coming through until you fill the whole thing in, at which time it will be too late.

Take your favorite illustration and fill in the figures. Do they still read? Do they still work the same way? Now go find a great silhouette and fill in the details of the figure. Do they make sense?

The fact is, what works as a silhouette may not work as a fully fleshed-in drawing, and vice versa. You need to draw the silhouette AS a silhouette to make sure your pose, your details and your composition all work AS a silhouette. Those interior lines you're relying on are giving you a false impression of what your final drawing will convey.

By all means, if you need to sketch in the rest of the figure to help you figure out proportions or anatomy, do so. But as quickly as you can, get rid of those interior lines. It doesn't matter if the figure looks good with all those interior lines drawn in, does it?

Also: Another pitfall to avoid when drawing silhouettes is looking at the inside of the outline. Most artists, when they draw, they see the inside edge of their outlines as the edge of their object. But when that object is filled in, it'll be the outer edge that is seen. Make sure that outer edge is the one that has all the right details and proportions. Use the thinnest line you can to make sure your outer line is true.

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Monday Morning Minnie -- Fetch, girl!

(Click on image for larger version)

Minnie's not much into fetch. While I throw the ball for Marty, who'd fetch himself to death if given the chance, I toss a second ball to Minnie. Sometimes she tries to catch it or pounce on it, and sometimes she tries to chew it and put it in her mouth, but usually she just gets hit in the head and ignores it.

This illustration is based on a photo taken while Minnie had some interest in the tennis ball, but didn't seem to get what she should do. It was inked with a Micron Pigma Graphic 1 pen, and colored in Photoshop.

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Tuesday Tutorial: Mock Woodcut

I've shown this technique before, but decided it should be covered in more depth.

This was a job I did several months ago for Miller WhiteRunkle in Seattle. They wanted a woodcut-style illustration of several objects, one of which was a poncho.

I began with this line drawing of the poncho, done in simple brush. I used this drawing as a guide for the final woodcut drawing, so what I needed here was clarity. I kept the lines crisp, and sketched in the shaded areas using an approximation of the line work I'd use in the finished illustration, but not concerned with the line quality.

The next step was to scan in the guide image, and reverse it. The woodcut effect is basically a brush drawing in negative, where the brush strokes you put down in black end up being white, and the white becomes black. So I needed my guide drawing to be in the negative as well. I then turned the image into a very light cyan and white. This made the image visible to me but not so visible to the scanner. You'll also notice I added parallel horizontal lines to the image -- I wanted my hatch marks to be horizontal, and these lines would help me keep them straight.

Here's a picture of the "final" art in progress, with me inking in the blue parts of the image with my brush. You can see the horizontal hatch lines that will look very "woodcutty" when it's all done.

It's at this stage that the tone for the image is determined. A tighter inking job with shorter, thinner strokes can give you a more engraved look, while a looser stroke with a heavier line weight and rougher edges can make a woodcut or linoleum block kind of effect. If more of the latter look is wanted, then I will try NOT to be too perfect with it. The more of those tiny "mistakes" -- ink going thin, stray line edges, smudges -- the more your drawing will look like a woodcut.

It's very hard to think in the negative, even with this close guide to follow. The thicker your hatching, which makes your work look darker while you're doing it, the lighter it will be when all is done. It takes a goodly amount of concentration.

When the image is all inked in, it looks like this on the left side of the final picture: a negative of the final image. After I scan the image in, and create a negative of it, clean it up and add color, we get the final image seen on the right.

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