The only good drawing right here is the bear.
No, no, no. Sit down. It's time.
Christ, an alpaca. They have got long necks.
It's time to talk about skill. Artistic skill, I mean. And I mean my skill specifically.
"BUT CALLIE! (or whatever superfluous screen name you might know me by)" you wail with horror! "Perhaps there has been some mistake. You are being stupid again. You are a very skilled girl and you know it."
No! You are wrong. Let me tell you why. Reader, I have become lazy. I've become the worst thing. I've become a gesture drawinger.
This is a rather pretty elephant and it's got a PHOTOSHOP TEXTURE for added interest, but it's completely a piece of poo poo.
"Callie I don't even know what this means" you say. Well shut up! Of course you don't.
But this is what it means: It means I don't use the MOST ESSENTIAL ARTIST SKILL WHICH IS CALLED "COMPOSITION". It's called "using shapes and guidelines to draw accurately", and little callie thought she was for real and tried not to do this for a while. Well it doesn't work!
An approach to drawing without any thoughts to shape and composition is faulty as hell, and I'm sorry to say I didn't realize this before I went to go draw pictures at the zoo. I apologize to all of you I've been stringing along and having you think I'm a f'real artist. I am not.
But don't be sad! It's the beginning of a new strategy. I'm going to post my humility right here for you all to see--studies and the hard lessons I'm learning about drawing.
The images I used for copy practice are from the blog Classic Cartoons (but I also draw from many other places, like John K's blog/etc etc)
Off to a rough start.
Here's another.
I realized at about this part how funny old cartoons are. I found myself giggling at the ...gorilla spider with a sharkdog on a leash. That never happens anymore!
A giant monkey from another still, and then I started on cartoon hands (the tutorial's on John K's blag on this page! but it is for general animation/drawing basics)
This is me, and I am going to improve.
