Javin Ladish

It’s kind of nice to start doing characters in their full form now.  It is, however, much more of a challenge than just a head!

Measuring up proportions and maintaining the correct negative space between objects is key to getting the pose right.  These two both have a few areas that could use improvement.  On both of the characters, the necks are not long enough and the sizes and angles of the individual objects that make up the character could have been closer checked.  But overall, I think they look pretty nice.

This Bugs pose is alright, except I squished jaw area a little too much.  Then I figured I should probably draw a scandalous looking Jerry, so I did.

These two were probably the most fun of all.  I love the shape of the character on the right. 

And last but not least, here are two that I finished up this morning.

Next stop, Lesson Five!…but I might take a detour and draw some other stuff first. 

When I started lesson three, I didn’t really feel like drawing any of the same characters I had drawn in the previous lessons.  I felt like drawing Jerry!

Here is the first Jerry attempt.  I brought it into Photoshop to make some notes.

I then started again from scratch, repeating to myself over and over not to make the same mistakes as I did last time.  This version has improved a bit, but doesn’t fully correct the mistakes.  It’s sort of one step between the last version and a perfect copy.  I swear Jerry’s left ear was playing tricks on me.

Next, I had my go at the laughing Jerry.  Once I was done with my first copy, I brought it into Photoshop again to see what I needed to improve.

Again, not perfect, but better! 

Here is one from lesson two that I thought was good at the time.  Photoshop proved me wrong.

This one took me one and a half tries to get right.  I finished my first copy, scanned it, and quickly realized that I made the ears and eyes a bit too small.  So I grabbed my pencil, made a few minor corrections, and scanned in the version you see here.

Lesson three turned out to be a great learning experience.  When drawing now, I look for every sort of angle and negative space I can find to compare between the drawings.  I also make measurements using my kneaded eraser. 

Oh yeah, check out some more old cartoon stuff I got.

Donald Duck isn’t my favorite character, but the comic covers have him in the greatest poses.

I guess he makes good green toys too!

Moving on to lesson two!

I feel myself slowly improving; being able to recognize the forms and proportions better.    I still take an incredible amount of time and patience with each sketch.

I really like the shape of the jaw on the bottom right one!    And I’m in love with these Carmine Red Col-Erase pencils.  They are so smooooooooooooth.

I will probably come back and do some more of lesson one and two as I keep progressing through the lessons.

Also!  Check out these old comics I picked up!  These ones had some covers that I thought would be great to study from.

So I have decided I’m going to go through all the Preston Blair lessons on the John K blog.  I recently just started a new freelance job that is requiring me to draw original characters really well that are actually functional, so I figured I should learn properly!  (More details on the job to come!)

Here is the first batch of consructed heads.  There are some obvious flaws with angles of shapes and perspective lines.  I think my favorite of all these has to be the middle-right rabbit.

Next to these I wrote some of the mistakes I made.  The character on top was a lot of fun.

I ordered the Preston Blair book, and it should be here in a few days.  I’m psyched to continue on through the lessons!

Ya’ll come back soon now, ya hear!?