Purely Old-School

No, this isn’t a drawing of 9/11, but rather this was drawn two years earlier for Lilo & Stitch.

When I was working on Lilo & Stitch in 1999, there was a scene where Stitch hijacks a 747 while attempting to escape capture. This ensues a chase scene that takes the jumbo jet throughout Honolulu; in this scene Stitch takes the airliner into the heart of Honolulu.

I was working from Utah at the time as a freelancer, but from what I heard, the entire scene was animated and colored when 9/11 hit. At which point the company knew they could never release the movie with that scene…so it was pulled and redone. The chase scene that ended up in the final version of the movie was the alien spaceship being chased through the Hawaiian mountains.

This was drawn with Prismacolor pencil and vellum. There was no Photoshop or other computer program used to create this effect. It was done purely old-school.

3 Minute Sketch

I wasn't sure how much time I had spent on first in this series of three figure drawings, so I estimated that it was between eight minutes or seven, but now I'm doubtful that is accurate. I was poking around my sketch pads and I came across this drawing where I had written down the time limit as three minutes.

I think I may have estimated that one too high, it may in fact be another three or five minute sketch instead of seven to eight. The seven to eight may be the second posting, and this last posting without a doubt is listed as three minutes.

If I have confused you, that's OK, because it is now clear in my mind...I think.

THE SECRET REVEALED!

O.K. here’s the answer to the question I posed to you all in the last entry. The difference between rendering and drawing is extreme.

Rendering is what most art schools teach. Through careful observation, the artist copies the information in front of him/her by rendering the values and shapes as accurately as they can…sometimes with no real understanding. This is an important skill to master, but it isn’t drawing.

A camera can render, a Xerox machine can render, but neither understands the structure or composition of that which it has rendered. Given enough time, even mediocre artists can render their way out of drawing problems without fully solving them or understanding them.

Drawing is the ability to understand what you are attempting to describe with your pencil, either through line or value. Drawing, such as figure drawing, involves construction drawing, perspective, anatomy, composition and design. Rendering can become part of the drawing, but a drawing doesn’t need rendering in order to work.

Charcoal Figure (7-8 min)

Here's another figure drawing. I can't remember how long it took to draw it, but NONE of the poses are ever longer than eight minutes, and it's been a while since I've drawn an eight minute sketch. So, I'm going to guess it's between eight minutes or seven. Again, there' s not a whole lot of time to work things out, just enough time to practice your proportions and design skills.

This isn't my class, but when I was teaching up in Utah, I typically liked to start with ten three minute sketches, then go to four fives...and then two tens. Having been properly warmed up, the students were now ready to draw. The longest pose my student's would draw would be 20 minutes. This is enough time to do a little rendering, but not enough rendering to hide weakness in their drawings.

Drawing and rendering are not the same thing! Go ahead and post what you think the differences are between the two.

Figure Drawing

Here's a figure drawing I did last week.

Having been inspired by Marcos Mateu, I thought I would do some figure drawing with a magic marker.

Upon Request...Roughs

Hello everyone:
Some people have been asking how I work, and what my roughs look like...so here are a few I did for Lilo & Stitch.

My friend Paul Felix had done an earlier version of Lilo's house that set the style for the architecture, I put it up on the hill with the carport underneath, and then he came back and added the extra room on top. Afterwhich, I took my pencil like a camera and went scouting for location ideas and compositions.

I've posted at Sketchclub too!

For those of you that are unfamilar with Sketchclub, it's a memory drawing game. We spot a person, try to memorize them quickly as we walk by, and then attempt to draw them from memory once we get back to the office. The trick is not to see what the other artists are doing.

Once the drawings are completed, we post them at www.sketchclub.blogspot and...only then... we see how close we came to each other's memory drawing of that person. This is my post, and Armand Serrano will be posting his version soon.

I've posted at El-Pacifico

Ladies and gents, I've posted my latest installment at El-Pacifico.

If you would like to follow the on-line improvisational blog comic, go to http://www.el-pacifico.blogspot.com, or click on the link provided to your left in the "Links" section.