Simplicity

Well, it's been about a month and a half.  I got real busy at work.  I had a bad cold.  I had several things I had to take care of.

But mostly, I lost my direction and I'm only now picking back up the thread.

Something I notice about most the great cartoonists' blogs... none of them are afraid of simplicity.  Quite the reverse, they thrive on it.  So I thought: here's a good way to back into learning.  Learn to simplify.

Now, this is the type of "squiggle" I used to do back in high school (many, many, many years ago).  I never thought too much of them because they were "easy" and "quick."  Quite the opposite - or so I thought - of what "real" cartooning ought to be.

I used to do thousands of these "squiggles" when I was a kid. 

But what many of the great cartoonists seem to do is to take very simple ideas like this one and run with it.  Imagine, you can color it in:

... you can really tweak the colors:

...you can shade it if you're so inclined and give it a 3-D effect:

OK, maybe I overdid it on the shading...

... slap on a background and viola!... not a half bad lil' cartoon.

This whole exercise took maybe half an hour... and that was mostly fiddling around with the colors.

Any bean or kidney shape can be a swell cartoon character.  Although it feels like a return to bad habits... well, what can I say.  Maybe somewhere it says cartooning should be quick and fun.

I am inexperienced enough to admit: I have absolutely no clue.  Just draw.  Don't fixate.  Draw!

Well, I guess it's back to my squiggles.  By the tens, the hundreds... the thousands.

Moral of story, don't be afraid to simplify.

Yet another...

I call it "Self Portrait of the Artist... with a beer."  Mmm-hmmm.

...And Another

I used to go for larger bikes than a 350.  I had a CX500... a great little Honda... that I rode all around Southern California.  Then I graduated to a Gold Wing.  But I always missed that 500.  It was a wonderful bike.

Anyway, my girlfriend's nephew had this CB350.  I used it to pass my driving exam for my motorcycle license.  It was such a fun little bike. 

The nice thing about this art project is I knew exactly what it would look like before drawing one line.  That felt good.

Still out to lunch...

... but here's one that I sorta like:

Some tropical foliage.  Kinda sorta.  Enjoy.

SketchBook Pro with a little finishing in Photoshop CS6.

Out to Lunch...

... for maybe the rest of the year as I venture out into my personal "voyage of discovery" (hyark... barf... urrp...) learning my elements as I draw them.

Everyone's gotta go through it.  I just wish I had done this 50 years ago.  I'm not so proud of everything that I've drawn these past weeks but I'll post a couple that don't embarrass me too badly.

All hand drawn... no ruler tools or anything like that.  Not so great... but everything was done in SketchBook Pro.  I didn't use Photoshop for anything.  Great little exercise in shading.  Decent.  Still learning...

Folks at the SketchBook Pro Facebook page seem to like this one.  Crazy... because I was convinced it was coming out so horribly.

Right now I'm working on a painting of some tropical foliage.  It's coming along.  Nothin' special.

Voyage of discovery.  Yeah.  But slowly things are starting to "take."  Give it time.

To be continued.  At some point.  Anyway...

UPA building design

I tried some drawing exercises of buildings.  I'm not particularly happy with the result so I'm going to continue to draw until I start producing something I can show.

In the meantime I put together this composite of a tall building from the UPA cartoon Magoo's Masterpiece.

See Magoo on the sidewalk?  He enters the building and camera pans up to the roof.  (Sorry for the side-gaps in the composite... I tried to put this together in Photoshop and I guess I still have some learning to do).

Apparently I missed the furious blog-bulletin board discussion from perhaps 3 or 4 years ago regarding UPA.  Some folks think they are an atrocity... others love them.  If I had chimed in I would have been in the camp that loves them.

I mean, look at this building.  It was a pan shot... and a very funny one... starting with Magoo marching in the front door through a police cordon and continuing up to the rooftop.  The quality of the drawing is so impromptu, so spontaneous... it required an extra-large poster board, that's for sure.  And yet the shapes and the colors are perfect.

Pete Burness was the director, and design is credited to Sterling Sturtevant (who incidentally was a gal, http://cartoonmodern.blogsome.com/2005/11/30/sterling-sturtevant/)

Credits panel for Magoo's Masterpiece

Well, a lot of folks have a lot to say about UPA and the modern-art style they brought to cartoons.  This gentleman wrote a dissertation on that very subject and I happen to agree with him.  UPA represented a break from Disney and their realistic style of cartooning.  I love them both... and apparently so did Ward Kimball when he adopted the style and oversaw the Disney classic Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom.*

*Incidentally, this is an extremely clean copy and the use of color is extraordinary, demonstrating that Disney did UPA better than UPA did UPA.  I'm sorry... there's no beating Disney.  Hands down they were the best.  One man's opinion, of course.  But at age 5 I began watching UPA and absolutely loved their cartoons... in other words I "got" it.  Apparently not everyone does, or maybe they get it but they dislike what they get.  I dunno.  I do know that an appreciation of their style has stayed with me through the rest of my life.

It is tough letting go...

I mentioned somewhere on this blog that I've never taken a drawing lesson.  That is probably patently obvious to anyone following along... but it also means that I never experimented and developed a "style."

My comfort zone allows just this: if I use a photo for reference, I try to draw the photo exactly.  I don't stylize the drawing... I don't selectively add or subtract for the sake of achieving a look.  It is a tough habit to undo... but a critical skill that I imagine most art students eventually master.

We don't draw "things," we draw representations of things.  So I'm learning.  But it's tough to let go ... no, to loosen my death grip... of a bad habit that gives some semblance of comfort.  But it doesn't feel so comfortable when I can't spontaneously create cartoon-style drawings based on photo reference material.

Well, blah blah blah.  I'm rambling.  So let me give you a concrete example.  Today I "reversed engineered" one of Frederick Garner's sketches for a set design to Powerpuff Girls, the western episode:

This is my interpretation of Gardner's already very loose, liberally stylized drawing.  It's a breath of fresh air to me... especially considering how - if it were me - I'd clutch the stylus in a vice grip and try to faithfully reproduce every board, every nail, I'd try to get the perspective exactly right... I'd make an impossible project of it.

Gardner probably jotted this clock tower in a few minutes.

So I set the stylus down, marveled at the simplicity and beauty of Gardner's drawing, and took the pledge.  Simplicity.  Aim for simplicity first, last, always.

If we seek only to achieve simplicity, then no project becomes too difficult.  Doesn't that sound right?  If we convey the simplest of shapes, of lines, of concepts, then no drawing is beyond our ability.  Because our rendering is simplicity in itself.  Ommmmm.... study your navel.  It's starting to make sense.

And if that's our philosophy, that in our hands every drawing becomes simple, then we should be able to draw just about anything.  Wouldn't you agree?  I mean, we should be able to jot out a sketch of... of... oh, I dunno... say Buckingham Palace!... with ease.

Shouldn't we?