Square One (the state of starting anew, not the hit public broadcasting television series)
mario February 21st, 2011
I haven’t been drawing.
There was a time, oh so long ago, when I thought to myself, “Self, you need to create something people will enjoy. This something should come in the form of a webcomic that doesn’t involve the intellectual property of others.”
And so I promptly screwed around and stopped working on everything comic-related. Life got in the way, but really I let life take over and changed my priorities. I got a better job, moved back to the part of California that doesn’t suck, and threw myself into activities directly related to paying bills and advancing career.
Through all this, I kept it in my mind that I wanted to get back to comics, that I wanted to make my big splash in the webcomic world with something I could truly call my own. I’m finally at a point where I feel like I can start to work toward these goals.
Too bad I forgot to keep drawing during all that downtime!
I feel like I’ve got a horrible case of the stupid fingers. I would never have claimed to be a great artist (that takes more formal art education, generally), but my lack of practice means my drawings today look not all that different from my drawings five years ago, when I still wasn’t where I wanted to be talent-wise. As a result, I’m forcing myself to go through the basics, to rebuild a foundation upon which I can build something resembling decent artistry.
While browsing through various Livejournal blogs of webcomic artists I admire (not at all to try and steal their powers), I was directed toward an excellent online tool at Pose Maniacs. The site has digitally-rendered male and female models in thousands of configurations of poses, with musculature exposed to help you break down the form. Of particular interest is the thirty second randomizer, forcing you to get your gesture draw on. It’s a wonderful resource I highly recommend everyone bookmark and frequent right away (get the iPhone app while you’re at it; I love the thought of having this sort of resource wherever I go). In the interest of attempting to build discipline through public display, here are some figure drawing exercises from yesterday and today (slightly NSFW pics of naked nudeness after the break). Continue Reading »