I used to play the piano and every day had to sit down and practice.
I was often accompanied by my cat, Jet, who would sit down in the immediate vicinity, often on the piano itself.
As the scales went up and down, and I battled with Beethoven and mangled Mozart, the cat would there through it all purring happily away.
I was often far from happy, as I found piano practice to be quite boring and monotonous, although I did enjoy playing the pieces once I’d reached a reasonable standard.
The trouble is that it takes a lot of practice of the nuts and bolts ,such as the scales and breaking the piece down into small sections, before you get good.
And this applies to anything we want to learn and not just musical instruments.
With cartoons characters it’s often a case of drawing the same poses over and over again until they begin to look right, and you start to develop muscle memory that same as you would for learning a physical exercise.
In fact a lot of popular cartoon characters are drawn in quite a limited number of poses. The side profile and three-quarter profile being two of the most common.
There’s no getting around the fact that it takes a lot of drawing the same thing again and again to master it, however, there are a few tricks you can try to make it less repetitive.
In this article we’re going to look at four different ways to make your cartooning practice more interesting.
We’re going to cover the following:
-Tracing
-Copying
-Changing colour
-Changing the eyes
Introducing Lionel Peabody
To help demonstrate these exercises, I’m going to enlist the help of Lionel Peabody - the absent-minded zoologist. Lionel is a character that I created a couple of years ago, but haven’t drawn recently. I’m currently working on a story about a very rare animal - the secretive Slush Leopard. I thought it was about time that Lionel made a return to investigate this most elusive of big cats. So to get him ready for his latest cartoon outing, it’s time to practice some of the poses he’ll be appearing in.
Today I’m going to keep it simple and stick to a three-quarter head profile. However, you can apply the following ideas to any pose you like.
Tracing
First, draw a row of poses.
Now choose one that you like and copy it.
Next, add a layer on top of this and copy it. Repeat a few times with different layers. When you’ve finished, line them up alongside each other. (Line up the Lionels!)
This is practice drawing the same thing again and again so you are starting to develop an instinctive feel for how the proportions should look.
Copying
Now we’re going to use the same reference pose to copy from.
Draw another line of poses, trying to copy the same one each.
Don’t worry if you get quite a variety, it takes a lot of consistent practice to draw the exact same pose each time
You could try using a grid to help you with the proportions.
Oops! I didn’t quite crop that image correctly. Just goes to show that nothing has to be perfect at this stage.
Changing Colour
Do you remember back in elementary school, or even younger, when you used to break open the crayolas, felt-tip pens etc. and go crazy with a variety of colours?
Little kids think nothing of changing colours at the drop of a hat, so give it a whirl yourself and try copying the same pose again, but changing colour each time.
Changing Eyes
Another trick you can try is to draw another row of poses, trying to keep all the features the same apart from one small element - in this case the eyeballs. This is sufficient to add a little variety to stop your brain from switching off, and yet enabling you to keep practicing the same pose over and over.
Summary
Here’s what we covered:
Tracing
Copying
Changing Colours
Changing the eyes (or another small detail)
