(10-21-2017, 11:43 AM)IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote:

(10-21-2017, 11:43 AM)IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote: This is a good guide, because I eventually want to draw a mandala.

[When I read this I envisioned for a moment an animal called a "mandala" -- sort of a small Beanie-Baby-like distant cousin of a panda. Doubtless in some alternate universe the gingko-tree forests are teeming with these critters. Another strange Earthling who might have reflexively thought this way was James Thurber, the 20th-century humorous writer and cartoonist, long associated with The New Yorker, who had a curious tendency to take abstractions for concrete things, and vice-versa: http://chawedrosin.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/thurbers-new-natural-history ]
....

I want to eventually draw magic between anthros and humans.

[Some lesser-known animal types with which to explore interspecial hybridization: https://urban75.net/forums/threads/animals-you-never-knew-existed.309625]

But one step at a time.

[As the Wise say: Patience, Grasshopper, we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it -- after first making sure we leave it burnt behind us! ]
....

I'm drawing pretty much every reference in Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life.

[You might find some inspiration and ideas in these instructional works by Andrew Loomis, a successful illustrator/author with a wonderful idiosyncratic style, who died the very year (1959) I appeared on the terrestrial scene, a Wanderer gone wrong, kicking & screaming over the outrageous inconvenience of having to rusticate thus in this cockamamie galactic backwater & plague-spot, especially now, what with the upcoming planetary cataclysms and all (they told me this whole planet would be like a mega-Tahiti, overrun with hot babes, cold beer, and warm fuzzies -- those higher-density lyin' sons-of-guns Confederation-recruiters and their phony-baloney full-color travel brochures!!). My sainted Father, who as a lad aspired to be an architect & wished to broaden his general drawing technique, acquired a copy of Loomis' first art-instruction book, Fun With A Pencil  hot off the presses in 1939. See  http://www.alexhays.com/loomis for PDFs of this work & others by Loomis. (Note: no foxes were actually hurt in the book-throwing gif. )



This book I actually still have, 78 years later, one of a mere handful saved from a personal library of over five thousand volumes which I seem to have mislaid. [*Takes five to cry into his beer.*] When I was a wee impressionable lad & an aspiring artiste myself, I pored obsessively with beady unblinking eyes (not unlike those of an ambulatory mental outpatient's) over Loomis' work, time and again. Also did I stare compulsively at ca. 1950s & early-1960s issues of Mad magazine, with its amazing cartoon-work by Will Elder, Wallace Wood, Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, et al, not to mention also the mind-blowing then-cutting-edge underground-comix of Robert Crumb), mystically drawn to the idea of producing savagely cutting cartoon-caricatures of humankind with which to while away the fleeting hours amassing artistic fame and fortune until the final apocalyptic world-upheaval, which I planned to sketch with one hand as it bore down on me even as I gave it the finger with the other hand (this is why to this day I make sure I have a charcoal pencil and a sketch-pad on me at all times, and do middle-finger exercises daily).




https://frankhudsonorg.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/wally-wood-self-portrait.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eq-alMI8Wz4/TpKNErj1e5I/AAAAAAAAR78/jvC8Wx78qpA/s1600/Mad%2B011%2BWally%2BWood%2B001.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lgJGCjrbL7A/UJhh7Rw_LvI/AAAAAAAAGP4/DayzPwE2KpI/s1600/PogoParody-WallyWood.jpg




https://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/p1330521.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbOlCX9Metg/TWPvK5ZPx1I/AAAAAAAADdc/irCc8sVrpI8/s1600/crumb3.jpg
https://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=14559




Cheers! 

IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote:Yeah, I have an online course I can take any time that teaches how to draw the human figure from the mind like it's an invention.

It was definitely hard at first. But I still get my horizontal or vertical scales off; mostly horizontal, either too skinny or too fat.

(12-06-2017, 07:06 AM)IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote: I remember twice as an adult where it felt completely natural to walk around naked outdoors.

(12-06-2017, 09:42 AM)YinYang Wrote: Are those yours, Gem? It brings back nostalgia in me... it reminds me of our 5 minute charcoal sketches we started with. The purpose was to train your eye, he believed if you get your composition wrong in the first 5 minutes, there's no fix, abandon it.

(12-06-2017, 06:02 AM)Coordinate_Apotheosis Wrote: Ahh, sharpening pencils the fun way, one slice at a time, no finer point can be made

(12-06-2017, 01:13 PM)IndigoGeminiWolf Wrote: Physics was my B.A. in college. Math was a minor.

Manguskhan Wrote:Digging back further into the past yielded this gem from my teenage years though. I'd forgotten about this thing for ages, and now looking at it some five years later is so interesting.

MangusKhan Wrote:The discussion in this thread has got me gung-ho about art again. I'd kind of abandoned art when I went to study physics, but I'm taking a break from uni for a while after this year and now I want to start again.

C_A Wrote:I would give a foot to be able to draw comics.