100 Days of Drawing (Week 6)

This week's drawings

This week we draw cartoons, first doing some character design sketches then exploring emotions and finally using ‘the bean’ to draw the body. 

We begin to formally learn perspective using the single vanishing point to draw the inside of a room.

We’ll draw a tree using our sphere and cylinder skills.

We continue our color study with tints and shades and continue our texture study learning the difference between real texture and implied texture.

• Day 38: trees
• Day 39: character design
• Day 40: a room in one-point perspective
• Day 41: emotional cartoon faces
• Day 42: the cartoon body
• Day 43: tints and shades
• Day 44: texture: actual/real/tactile vis implied/visual

Materials:

• pencil
• eraser
• paper (printer paper, notebook, etc)
• colors (colored pencils, crayons, watercolor, etc)
• alternatives to the above: smart phone or tablet drawing app

Day 38: trees

Starting with the tree trunk, Mark Kistler anchors his tree with the roots before adding 'balls' of leaves.  His step by step instructions begin on page 163 of his book: you can draw in 30 days

Here is his 19 minute video showing how to draw the tree: How to draw trees with roots: Day 21

And here is my short video:

Day 39: character design

Tom Bancroft in four pages of Creating Characters With Personality guides us through creating a character.  We start with a basic shape (circle, triangle, square, rectangle) to create a face and head. He than uses the basic shapes to make various character bodies. Finally he gives an example of breaking down a character into simple shapes so that you can manipulate the shapes to draw your character moving around in your imagination.

In Cartoon Character Design for Beginners (7 minutes, 1.7M views) we get to watch Christopher Hart design an appealing character.

Day 40: a room in one-point perspective

Mark starts with a square which be ones the far wall of the room's interior. He places the vanishing point at the center of the square and makes lines through the vanishing point and the corners of the square.  These lines define the corners of the room. He furnishes the room using lines through the vanishing point and vertical lines to create shapes on or through the "walls". For step-by-step instructions, go to page 171 of Mark's you can draw in 30 days

Watch Circle Line Art School's How to draw a room on one point perspective: Day 22. It's a 10 minute video which has you drawing the horizon and a vanishing point on the horizon. From there you draw the room, add windows and a door.  You then furnish the room with a table and items on the table. To further your illusion, you provide shadows made by the light from the side window.

Sadly, I didn’t add shadows or shading so my table, chair, and man are flat and seem to float a bit:

Day 41: emotional cartoon faces

Now that you have created a character, let's enliven your character with emotions. I suggest that you get a piece of paper and divide it up to give yourself drawing areas where you can create emotions and label them.  I divided my paper into 18 spaces and drew a face that was:

• happy
• sad
• angry
• surprised 
• bored
• ashamed
• annoyed
• confused
• thoughtful
• jealous
• tired
• embarrassed
• confident

Here are two videos that illustrate drawing cartoon emotions:

• How to draw 20 different emotions by Shoo Rayner (10 minutes, 366K views)
• How To Draw Manga/Cartoon Facial Expressions by vuPlantz (4 minutes, 415K views)

Here is my Procreate generated video of drawing emotions:

Day 42: the cartoon body

Now that you know how to draw cartoon characters from head to toe, let's start learning how to draw the human bean : ) Proko shows us How to simplify the motion of the torso (11 minutes, 3.6M views) by using "The Bean".  He demonstrates how The Bean is based on the human trunk (chest and pelvic) and how it helps us visualize its twists and turns.

In How to Draw Better Bodies - Part 1 by Brookes Eggleston (7 minutes, 243K views) you'll see how to quickly sketch 9 basic body shapes in 7 minutes! I encourage you to use The Bean when you do your sketches.

Day 43: tints and shades

You make a tint by adding white to a color.

You make a shade by adding black to a color.

By adding black to white you make shades of gray. You can create a value scale by starting with white and adding black, bit by bit, to make darker and darker shades of gray until you get to black.

Tints and Shades by School of Yule (2 minutes 68K views) shows you an examples of making a value scale from white to black and then a value scale in blue.

If you do a painting using only tints and shades of one color, it's called a monochromatic painting.  The drawing I did has a monochrome man using tints and shades of red. 

This video, The Value Song by Scratch Garden (3 minutes 1.4M views), gives you a nice overview of tints and shades. 

Here is my video of drawing an artist measuring his subject:

Day 44: texture: actual/real/tactile vrs implied/visual

"Actual (real) texture is palpable or physically real (like tree bark) while visual, or implied, texture is the illusion of physical texture experienced with our eyes."

My drawing implies the texture of a fuzzy dog, a feathery bird, a man with hair, cloth clothes, and leather shoes.

Here are 4 short videos that will imprint texture onto your understanding:

• The Texture Song by Scratch Garden (3 minutes 1M views)
• Elements of Art: Texture by KQED (4 minutes, 980K views)
• Actual vs implied texture by Olivia Clark (6 minutes, 3.7K views)
• Texture: Tactile and Visual by Thea Vasquez (6 minutes, 5.8K views)

Here is my video of drawing a my cousin Bruce completing the Washington DC 75 mile GORUCK event with his dog and toucan:

Table of Contents & INDEX