Lesson 8

This is the final John K exercise I will do for a while. It's great I've atempted all of John K's original 9 lessons,which originally you could show to try enter the cartoon college blog. I could try to do that but there is plenty more from his blog for me to do anyway. Plus, I could do many more drawings for these attempted lessons using existing drawings and overlayed notes.

January will be figure drawing month for me. I have classes to go to as well as Glen Vilppu DVDs. Doug Campton's lesson notes from his Karmatoons site look like fun too. I may post some of my stuff regarding this on my other blog occasionally.

Anyway, here are my attempts at the dogs (with and without overlays).

Generic 40s studies

Here are some generic 40s studies I have been doing.

More Top cat construction

I've done four more TC Studies. A first attempt and a redo and two others. Hope I'm going about it the right way:

It's all good practice that hopefully I'm getting things from. The redos seem helpful I'm going to go work on another Blair exercise now. Might try some more of these later.  :)

Happy Birthday Gemma

I put my animation practice to good use and made this original Bosko-like dance for Gemma's Birthday.

Hope you have a wonderful day gemma :)

Hands

OK, done all of Blair's hands and then did some via memory or only a few glances. Don't know if this is 9 or 5A. Anyway, I started in TVP:

Did some in the car on paper:

Then I started using this new program artrage 3 (awesome ink and pencils):

Finally, some by memory and some copies. I also did the Blair Dog, bird and baby penguin. The dog and some of the hands earlier are sketchy as I did them in a moving car:

Top Cat

I've made a start at the top cat construction (with an overlay):

THe Points of all this

I've been reading the top cat contruction posts here are some important quotes from that by John K:

• When I am learning something, I tend to draw stiff, because I am thinking about what I am trying to learn. The drawings don't come out all pretty with clean flowing lines and stuff.

         When you study, you are trying to be accurate, as opposed to
         beautiful and flowing.

         Once you have done your stiff drawings, you can loosen up a bit
         and then try again from memory and see if what you learned sunk
         in.

•  I always write notes when I study something so that what I observe sticks with me.

• The point of copying is not just to copy but to understand what is happening in the things you are copying: and then to apply them to your own work

Here, Rodrigo did a careful study of a toy and what it looks like from different angles. This is a great thing to do - IF you then apply some of what you observed to your cartoons.



Rodrigo also sometimes does careful construction studies from classic cartoons - also a good thing - if you then apply it to your own work.

Heckling Hare Attempt

Here my first attempt: