Seasons Change


I worked the San Diego County Fair today and yesterday. Long shifts, 10 - 10, but definitely fun and very much worth while. The last two days combined I made around $800. That's almost more than I made last month at Legoland and Seaworld (both have picked up this month though). I'm trying to talk the lady that bought the booth into letting me work it next year for her. She's been doing this for 20 years and wants to retire. She says it's stopped being fun for her and it sounds like she doesn't make near what I make. She does this old style Disneyland profile portrait thing that just doesn't sell anymore. I keep telling her I can train her and make it fun for her. Maybe she'll come around. I hope so. This was a lot of fun. In the mean time, I worked it out with my manager at Legoland to get me off Friday so I can work one of the really busy days. Maybe I'll make a $1000. Wouldn't that be something?

I hit a new stride with my caricatures tonight. Crazy cartooney details. For about an hour I felt like I'd invoked the spirit of Dirk West (he's dead right? (don't want to invoke somebody's spirit if they're still using it)) with some of my sports caricatures. And I had all sorts of fun conversations with the guests. I feel so natural now with entertaining people. A lot of it is sharing conversations that I'd had previously in the day. It's funny how that works. Something someone mentions in the morning perfectly dovetails into a perfect joke for a customer in the night. If I had frames to sell I could be banking with all the buddy currency I build up in the length of a ten minute drawing. The more you endear yourself to a customer the more stuff they want to buy from you... usually.

Regarding the comfort level I have now with my drawing; I had a conversation with Karen over the phone today (she's the woman that owns the booth). Her biggest problem is fear of rejection. She gets so worked over thinking about the drawing and whether someone will reject it. I mean a lot of it has to do with the style she's doing. But moreso with her thinking. I don't think anymore. I don't even think about NOT thinking anymore, lol. Which is where I was at last year. I'm reacting now 100% of the time. I see a line - draw a line. I hear a comment - respond with a comment. Get an idea - draw an idea. It's so fluid now that it's like watching a machine work. It's beautiful. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

One last thing, The final drawing I did tonight, almost turned into a fight between two customers. Lol. There was a huge line come 9. And the last two were sort of fighting over who was there first. I said whoever goes last gets the body drawn for free ($5 discount). That settled it. I get to that last drawing and it's a kid playing soccer. Wants to be a goalie. He and his family barely speak a word of english. And I'm drawing it and I get to the body and I pause for a minute to think through the pose. (Don't usually do this - but it was the last one of the night so I wanted it to be rockin') And while I'm sitting there a June bug flies right in front of me and I reach out and snatch it out of the air like Mr Miagi. The whole family gasps and laughs. I place the June bug in a cup with a lid next to me and finish the drawing. After everyone's gone I close up the tent and let the June bug fly away. Some of you... will know what that means to me.

Keep smiling ya'll.

--Will

Addendum

Talking about the breakthrough I had last night with drawing reminded me of something Ron was telling me at the party the other day about Francis. Francis moved to San Diego when he was, I think, 30. He had already been pretty proficient with drawing - producing lots of sketches each month. But when he started doing game design it got thrown into a whole new gear. In fact, he would collect reams of sketches with giant clips and stack them up on top of each other. They called it Francis' "tree". Thousands and thousands of drawings of anything from chairs to tech to character designs. Anytime someone needed something for the game he'd do a quick sketch of it from every angle on a sheet of paper and turn it in. Sometimes several versions of each object from every angle. Pretty incredible really. And that's where many of his breakthrough's came from.

Sheer volume.

I figure by Summer's end I will have drawn 5,000 caricatures this year. Keeping that in mind I'm making more of an effort to learn lessons with each one I do. Drawing hands in every drawing for instance. Drawing more poses and doing more experimentation. It's a great excuse to grow in new directions. I've been told by many people that Steve Silver draws constantly. Everywhere he goes he draws at least a few sketches. At a party a few weeks ago my manager Steve Fishwick showed me a couple 3-ring binders that he had of Silver's sketchbooks; Fish is good friends with him and he would steal his sketchbook when he'd go to visit him and make copies at kinkos of the entire book just so he could look through them more in depth later. Silver fills each page to capacity and each sketchbook end to end. And with a HUGE variety of experimentation. Varying color, theme, style, genre. It's inspiring. It's something I've seen Steve Fishwick do very well in his own sketchbooks. But every thing has a common theme: Capturing life.

Something else Ron told me at the party, was that I needed to draw more figures in my sketch book. Not just nude poses, but actual people. Capturing real life - walking, standing, gesturing - being human. One of the reasons my characters don't completely take on a life of their own yet is because the majority of personality comes from the way people move. How they carry themselves. It so makes sense. I've been doing lots of sketches since then of people around me just walking, or standing in line or something. And no two people are alike. One woman walks with her arms bent at the elbows and jutting forward and her fingers daintily dangle like she's holding something in front of her. One man walks like he has to throw his feet ahead of him to get his body moving. One person seems to have to move one whole side of their body to get going - moving right arm and leg together, then left arm and leg together... like a penguin. It's fantastic. And just applying stuff like that along with my character's faces has already given them a whole new life. And this is just day three.

The other interesting thing about all this, is realizing how MUCH drawing I'm doing now. There's always been this small fear that I shouldn't overwhelm myself with drawing - that I might somehow get tired of it and want to quit. But now I realize how stupid that is. It seems now the more I draw - the more I want to draw. And the better I get - the more I want to draw. I get angry sometimes at my schedule that I don't get to draw even more. Do you believe that? I draw 10 hours a day sometimes and it's still not enough.

So that's what I'm thinking. Yep.

--Will

"It's like sugar for my Soul..."

I did this Grad nite party in Newport Beach last night with my friend Gabe. It was fun overall. The party itself was a little overwhelming to me. My Grad night was a lock-in at the Texas tech athletic center. There were card tables, a few local live bands and basketball. This grad night was something different altogether. First there was a 25 foot replica of a Volcano in the center of the facility, with working lava and smoke. A giant mock pirate ship (the theme was pirates) in the front, the entire place was decorated like a lavish movie set. Then there were 4 airbrush body art painters, 2 caricature artists, a live high-dollar DJ, and all kinds of games and rides, from a full-on gambling casino to a giant flight simulator. Yeah.

So I've done a LOT of drawings the last few weeks. I bought a ream of 500 sheets of 11x17 white paper for my caricatures 3 weeks ago, for the fair and all these parties. I'm almost out. I figure I've done nearly 400 "actual" caricatures in the last 3 weeks. I just can't slow myself down. My partner last night was working about half the speed of me. And I had all intention of doing the same, but when it came down to it... I couldn't. There's no reason to draw fast at a party. You get paid hourly and as long as you're entertaining and doing a reasonable amount of drawings there's no obligation to do more. So I just can't figure it.

Here's the interesting part about drawing at this party. Some time around Midnite I started to burn out. I'd been drawing since 10 in the morning at Legoland and went straight from there to the party. And this was my third late night doing caricatures in a row. So I took a couple breaks hoping to get my sketch back. But it just kept getting sloppier and less enthusiastic. It still looked like the people, but I lost my magic. I lost that clean, idealized sketch that everyone seems to love so much.

Then after a while I started to get even more loose and wild. Exaggerating anything and everything, more out of frustration than spite. Drawing noses so large they dipped down below chins, mouths so big the jaw couldn't contain them. And the eyebrows... oh how I love big, furry, amphigourious, caterpillar-like eye-brows. They are my muse. All this exaggeration and I still had likenesses dead on, which made the whole process even more frustrating. Because I wasn't trying to be mean... but I couldn't stop. In fact these were some of the meanest sketches I'd ever seen anyone do, let alone from me. And they were funny. I had such a large crowd belly-laughing behind me that I couldn't stop laughing myself. I still don't know why people kept sitting down. They'd take one look at the drawing and walk away "butt-hurt" holding my sketch loosely with two fingers like they were holding a bag of pungent crap. But come they did. Relentlessly.

Then round about One in the morn'... I gave up. I stopped thinking, stopped trying. And something incredible happened. Enlightenment. A whole new realm of drawing that I never knew existed. The heavens opened and the angels sang and every line was perfection. Every face was nigh photo-graphic, funny and beautifully rendered. I watched almost in third person as the lines poured from my pen like digitally rendered masterpieces of perfection. Of course we should keep in mind this was nearly 2 in the morning (3 hours past my bedtime) after a very long week and I was reaching a blissful state of delusion. However, many people commented on the change in quality. Including my partner. Apparently the frantic pace had pushed me up the mountain to a whole new plateau.

I went to Legoland this morning and started drawing and realized, thank goodness, that it wasn't just a dream. I really had something new to my sketch. Something exciting is bubbling over now. I can't wait to see what happens next.

One thing's for sure, next slow break I get I need to make a website for my caricatures because I think I can do really well selling these on the internet. Especially considering the amount of traffic I get to my site just because of the caricatures. We're talking 10,000 hits a month just to the old caricature samples on my site. Not even the new stuff I'm doing. But that's for later.

So here's some new samples... I don't have anything from the party last night, the cowboys caricature is actually from today, but it's not the best representation of my skills right now. I only had 30 seconds to draw each face, because these kids were squirming so much. I drew the faces and the parents handed me 80 bucks and told me to make them cowboys and frame it up and they'd be back. So I did. They loved it. I really liked drawing the cowboy stuff. My first time doing that.



Anyways, here's to delusional epiphenies!

--Will

Parties

I went to two parties this past weekend. One was a party for Seaworld, for the new crew to meet the old and for everyone to chill out before the crazy season starts. It was cool, I got to meet a lot of the old school artists that were part of all the cool stories I hear about how it was 5 and 10 years ago. Most of them don't work there anymore, just come to the parties to hang out and stuff. It must have been something amazing to be 17 or 18 and signing on with this crew a few years back. Being mentored by some of the best of the best, and everyday was one big contest to see who could bust the most balls with their caricatures. The talent that came out of that era is phenomenal. And then to hear the stories of the lives outside of the park. Parties, clubs, sketchnights, pranks... and quests. Moving with a small colony of equally talented artists to another city to see what they could make of themselves. And now seeing all these great artists make their way into the industries that we all hold dear. Animation, comics, tv, game design. And to know who they were before, and where they came from. Man.

The second party was with a bunch of the artists from the Watts school. I am so glad I finally got to go to one of these parties. This one was a going away party for one girl that moved here from Florida a year and a half ago. She came here, took 10 classes every term for the last year and a half and soaked in an unbelievable amount of knowledge. And now she's off to Georgia to go to the Ringling school of animation to learn illustration. And she's not even 20 yet. But she's just one story of many at the Watts school. It is a harbor for many nomad artists. Looking to become something more and take it back into the world.

There was so much at this party I could mention, but I think the only thing I will say is that Ron Lemon looked through my sketchbook. And like Brian Stelfreeze did every year at Aggiecon, he opened up my head and pulled out a handful of roadblocks. He gave me some fantastic feedback, and some very flattering compliments. He really liked my sketches from the last couple months. I mean... I really like my sketches from the last couple months, they have a new life to them. They have, well.. composition, lol. Best of all he seemed to really like my concept sketches for the new mini-series that I'm working on for Ape. We had a long talk about steam engines and old machinery and the steampunk genre. I felt like such a dork. And we had an interesting conversation about his career aspirations. I don't know why it never occurred to me that he would have career aspirations. I mean he's already done so much. And to think that he has the same insecurities and breakthroughs that I go through... that we all go through. It was a relief really. But where he's headed, is some pretty amazing stuff.

I still can't get over how completely different my life is right now. Everyday is a new awakening. Every moment is spent doing or learning something new. I can't believe I spent so much time living any other way. Anyways, I could go on and on... but I need to go to bed. And I still have some free beer to drink.

--Will

Answers

I made that thousand a lot quicker than I thought I could. I've definitely found my way back onto the right path as far as money is concerned. What changed? Well there was the tithe. But what I was missing, was giving myself money as well. Ten percent to God and Ten percent to me. I realized I was making that mistake when I kept having to dip into my tithe. But I was always diligent to pay it back as soon as the next windfall came in. Which made me think that I should be doing that with my own savings, dipping in when I need and paying myself back right away. And that's what I've been doing bit by bit. Right after that epiphany I had a pretty incredible conversation with my roommate about how he had become so lucrative with his money (Making $100 thousand a year and all). Turns out he had slowly saved up six months worth of income. And he dips into it and pays it back whenever necessary. Never living for a paycheck.

I'm overwhelmed with financial opportunities right now. I'm getting so many offers to make quick money that it blows my mind. I did those yacht Grad parties the other week and made $400 with that. I did Del Mar fair last Wednesday and made $250 and another $400 tonight. I'm doing a party in Newport tomorrow night for $300 bucks and I've got a half-dozen commissions lined up and I'm knocking em out one at a time. And on top of that I've got my regular $200 a week at Joe's. And Seaworld and Legoland are starting to make mad money. I figure I may make $2000 - $4000 this month altogether. Course with school and regular bills and Comic-Con coming up it's not really all that much. But it will at least be comfortable. And best of all.. do-able!

I have a financial strategy now. First step is to save up six months worth of income. Then second, start making my money make money for me. I'm starting to see passive incomes and investments everywhere. Opportunities abound. And I think the right ones will present themselves when the time for me is right. And I have a feeling that the financial windfalls will continue to grow exponentially, as they have been, until that time arrives. Pretty awesome stuff.

Oh also.. Someone gave me a free case of (good) beer, a free case of water (totally unrelated) and I've had at least half my meals free the last two weeks. One of the booths at the fair even gave me a free meal. Pretty cool or what?

--Will

Metamorphine


This last week was particularly hard. Not quite sure why exactly. It started with the laundry/pig fiasco last Saturday, and seemed to just go downhill from there. I think I've been homesick. And that was making everything worse... harder. I just finished my first term with the Atelier, and it really feels like the half-way point of this journey. And it's got me thinking about what direction to head after the summer's over. I almost don't want to stop learning here, even for a couple months. My potential seems clearer and clearer each day. I see paintings, drawings and stories in my head that I will draw someday - that inspires me to grow.

But it's finally hitting me that I'm here very much alone. I'm making friends, some people I could see becoming very close to. But stuff like that takes time. I'd forgotten what it was like. Watching small conversations turn into fond memories and lasting friendships over time. Like watching plants grow day after day. In the interim it can get lonely. But life has a way of reminding you that it will all work out. Today I was drawing at Legoland and a little girl, maybe 2 or 3 years old, comes up and gives me a hug while I'm drawing someone. I guess I looked like I needed it or something. I almost started to cry.. lol. I suddenly didn't feel so bad.

...God never gives us more than we can handle, right? This truly is a wonderful life.

So something interesting has been happening lately. I've been getting emails from all sorts of people. From around the country and around the world... Poland, Japan, Denmark, Portugal and all sorts of other places. People that are interested in what I'm doing, wanting to know more, some even wanting commissions. Appreciative of tutorials I did years ago, or postings I made long ago on different forums. It's like all the effort I made in my past life before coming out here seems to have finally come to some fruition. And it seems like everyday I meet someone here who's heard of me, or read something about me, or told me that I'd mentioned something to them in passing that's had profound impact on their lives. That's humbling. I used to try so hard to help people, and now with no effort on my part I'm able to affect people, just by being me.

And then there's this...

The other day at Seaworld one of the guys I work with told me he drew a caricature of a guy from South Carolina (I think it was) the day before and the guy asked if "Will Terrell" worked there. He'd read about me on my website and was hoping to meet me. Crazy. Don't know what that means. Wish I could have met him tough, that would have been an interesting conversation.

Speaking of meeting people... Comic-Con is about 3 and a half weeks away. July 14-17(I think preview night is the 13th for professionals) I know I've got a couple friends coming out for the show. And a few other people have mentioned previously they intended to come out. I'd like to hook-up with whomever is planning to be here, but I need to know who's coming and when. So send me your plans as soon as possible. I'm trying to get all 5 days off from work, but that may not happen. So I need to know what to work towards.

Oh and here's a shout out to the Metropolis radio guys in Lubbock. They're making some local news. Glad to hear it. I think they do an awesome service for Lubbock. And I hope it's a legacy that goes on for a long time. Thanks to my Dad and Rodrick for the scoop on that.

--Will

Coolers

This makes me happy. Of all the caricatures I've had done of me since I've been here this is the first one that I actually want to put up on my wall. It's from my friend Marco at Legoland. He's a great artist and he's only getting better. Can't believe he's just 19.


Thursday was Pirate day for caricatures. It's mostly just a game between me and Marco. But it's a lot of fun. Friday was all about putting Darth Vader in the background of every caricature. My favorite was Mermaid Vader and Nascar Vader.

--Will

Signs of a rough day...

It takes 5 hours to do one load of laundrey.

When said load of laundrey is done you realize there were Hershey's kisses in pants pocket in said load of laundrey.

You get dressed in chocolate dabbed caricature shirt to go do caricatures at Joes Crabshack on the other side of town.

You get stuck for an hour on the freeway only to finally realize there's a 400 pound pig roaming through traffic.

You get stuck in traffic for an hour because of an aimlessly roaming giant pig, make it almost all the way to your destination to do caricatures only to realize you left your markers at home.

You get stuck in pig-clogged traffic for an hour, forget your markers, go all the way back and get them, finally make it to Joe's crabshack to do caricatures... and there's nobody there.

You go to a movie to forget the laundrey, the chocolate shirt, the pork-jam and the amnesial-markers and end up getting lost in La Jolla looking for the movie theater only to end up in a whole other city long after the movies started.

Finally make it to the movie and the sound doesn't work.

Who's not doing laundrey, driving, or drawing caricatures tomorrow? Me.

Who's going back to bed? Me.

Who needs a hug? ...Me.

--Will

This week was different

Everything about it... me... felt different. I don't know what it was exactly. Maybe the strange circumstances of all that I'm up to these days, or getting reacquainted with old, OLD friends... and new ones. Maybe it's realizing who I am again. Maybe it's everything. Maybe it's me.

The last few nights I've been doing these late night gigs drawing caricatures on a Yacht for graduation parties. Usually till 4:30 in the morning. Its been a pretty amazing experience on so many levels. First of all I don't remember the last time I was on a boat. And I don't think I've EVER been on a boat this big, let alone a yacht. Second of all we were sailing around in the ocean... the middle of nowhere, no lights to be seen in the sky and only a handful of small blinking dots on the horrizon. No matter how big the boat you're on you're just a small person in a small crowd on just another glowing dot on the endless horizon of life. What a way to send these kids off into the world. With a metaphor that they probably won't get for another 10 years... if ever.

For me the parties themselves were a reminder that it's been ten years since graduation. And what it was like being in high school and starting out into the world with that hesitant smile and that lost gaze in my eyes. It seems like everyone lives their most stereo typical roles in high school and just after. Because that's all I saw these nights were stereo types. And I remember living amongst them... maybe even being one. And I remember watching all of my friends grow out of them. And become themselves. It's amazing really.

But I digress...

Doing these parties made me realize how much I'm getting done here. I get up at 8:00 am every morning (Anyone that's known me for any number of years knows that's a miracle in and of itself). But I don't even use an alarm clock. I wake up at the same time every day, excited and inspired. Hop in the shower and head out to my day. And I work 3 jobs now... sometimes 4 or 5... in a DAY (like last night). That idea was laughable to me a year ago. But now it seems perfectly natural, even more, it's fun to me. Yesterday I worked from 10-5 at Legoland, went to Joes' from 6-9 and drew comic book stuff from 9-12, then went to the Grad Party till 4:30 in the morning. Usually I stop at 12. But this was different.

I drew more than 200 caricatures yesterday.

It seems like the more I draw, the better I get. It's easy to tell yourself that's how it works, it's a whole other thing when you're actually doing it. I'm drawing like a madman in my sketchbook nowadays. It used to be something that I forced myself to do because I knew it was good for me. But now it's something I crave. I look forward to making myself laugh with my own artwork. Letting my imagination open and see what spills onto the page. Right now I'm at that exciting stage where I draw stuff but everything I draw feels like someone else drew it. Someone far better than I. Which makes it all the more exciting to see the final results. I'm just not nearly as limited with my art as I was before I came here. I find that I have the tools now to truly be creative. Instead of just struggeling with creative intentions.

And it's not just my artwork thats changed.

I find myself looking off into the future. Thinking more about the horizon and living a decisive life instead of a reactionary one. This week was the first week that I was able to live on savings. Hopefully by next month I will be completely independent in that aspect. And I'm looking beyond that, planning how to be free financially to do all that I want, how to retire, how to be comfortable. And not in the naive wild imagination that I used to plan my future with before. I'm figuring out how to make my money make money for me. And not in a greedy sense, just in a logical step by step way. That old adage "Work smarter not harder." I've been learning that from my roommate, and I think he's learning that from me. We both have the potential and the resources. Just needed to rethink the course.

I read this article in the SD paper yesterday that there are more than 35,000 millionaires living in San Diego county. I can see why too, this area just lends itself to it. A port city looking out on the limitless vast ocean. It gets you thinking every time you see it. And my ultimate goal isn't to make a million dollars. It's to be limitless in the possibilities I have because of the money I have. I'm not even putting a number to it anymore. Because that purpose can work for any amount of money. Money is the same as my talent, I have to have a reason for having it before I can know how to use it. And just having it isn't a good enough reason.

Having purpose seems to be my motto here.

--Will

Atelier - Week Nine

This was definitely a breakthrough week for me. In head drawing, I've been edging ever closer to getting the technique down to the correct style. This week felt almost right, and with only a little help from the teachers. The thing that makes me most excited is what finally clicked in the Intro to Tonal drawing class. It's going to help everything else so much more. Here's my head drawing...


And heres Ron... Still pretty amazing...


In Tonal Drawing we worked on drawing small, quick head sketches for doing Figure quick sketch. Since the head often gets neglected pretty much in the figure quick sketch. The coolest part was that I had to get so tight into the drawings that I finally figured out how to do edge work and how to hint at tones. I've always been good at drawing clean crisp lines with a regular pencil - holding it in the normal way. But I finally got to where I'd hold the charcoal pencil so that it was right on top of the drawing, so it gives this really crisp clean line to it. Makes a huge difference. And from there laying in hints at tone was easy. Anyways, here's the drawings. It's mostly a bunch of 2 and 3 minute heads from photo reference.


Next week is the last week, and we'll actually be drawing from the figure. So stoked. This is exactly what I was wanting for drawing my comics stuff.

--Will

Attn: LUBBOCK COMIC JAMMERS!

Luis Estrada with UglyPuppy.com and my best buddy Brandon Adkins are hosting a comics jam in lubbock Tuesday June 7th. Be sure to make it. Bring your sketchbook and pencils and a friend. Hang out with other local artists and have fun drawing comics. Map and info is HERE.

--Will

Caricatures

I have been having so much fun with my caricatures lately. I've especially been having fun with actually entertaining the kids. There's nothing quite like matching wits with a 4 year old. My favorite game right now is seeing how many times I can convince, refute and yet again convince tweener boys that I'm drawing them dressed in pink tootoos. My record so far is 15 in one conversation. "Purple mustaches" work well on girls. It's all about playing with the imagination of a child. It's limitless fun.

I'm getting a lot better at integrating elements of the conversation into the cartoons. Catechizing the kids until I find something funny to illustrate; to alleviate the monotony of one too many shamoos. One of the funnier ones was this asian family that had three kids drawn. I heard the girl mentioning one of the rides she wanted to go on was Shipwreck rapids... but she called it "Shipwreck rabbits." I thought it was the funniest thing ever. So I drew her on shamoo and added a tiny island in the background with shipwrecked rabbits looking all sad. Her brother caught onto one of our games from the other day, cause I drew him in "Tighty Whities" the theme of the day. He wanted his little brother drawn in them too surfing on a shark. Turned out pretty funny. And one kid got so mad that he had to get drawn riding on shamoo that when he saw it he started screaming in this hillarious mopey howl. I couldn't stop laughing. I ended up drawing this disgruntlment between him and Shamoo after he left.



Anyways, that's just some of the funny ones from recently. There're others but I didn't get pictures. These are from people that leave their pictures at the booth for later. It gives me a chance to take pics of them. Overall everything is getting much, much cleaner. The line work, the backgrounds and especially the colors. And I'm getting more into capturing the personalities of the subjects and less about getting the face right. And I'm really getting the interaction thing down well.



And here's a random mutant chicken I did one day when I was bored.


Unrelated to the art, I went to a managers meeting at Legoland tonight and it was pretty interesting. They had us do role-playing on how to train artists on selling frames and stuff like that. Funny enough, I think most of us hadn't had that sort of training ourselves. I know I hadn't. And especially not the role-playing. So it was good. I think I got a lot out of it. I've been warming up to the idea of selling more efficiently. One artist I know looks at it like this... these are works of art, and he gets mad if people don't think his art is worth framing. That got me thinking. It's more a pride in one's work when you look at it like that. And if they buy a frame you double your sale instantly. It's something to think about.

--Will

Atelier - Week Eight

Figure Quick Sketch. We started doing figure quick sketch this week and I am in love. I'm taking this as a full class next semester. This stuff is great. It's basically using the rythym method that we were using on the face but now applied to drawing the figure. This is so what I needed for drawing comic books. This week we worked from photo and drawing reference. I think we'll probably be doing the same next week as well, then the last week we'll be drawing from a model. I can't tell you how excited I am about this technique. The best part is that pretty much anyone can do it. It's so basic and step by step that anyone can do it and get a good result, and with practice become a fantastic artist.

Anyways, the first pic is of all the 5 min quick sketches I did. And the second page is some figure invention that I tried on my own. The last image is the Reily "rythym" method broken down step by step. I'll try to do a tutorial for both this and the head drawing whenever I get a chance. But these last couple weeks I've been going non-stop with very little free time.



Head drawing class was ok. No pics from it. It was such a weird class/bad day - that I didn't get what I should've out of it. Long story... don't want to get into it.

Two weeks left. Then there's a 4 week break till the next term. New class schedule just came out. I'm planning to take Court Jones' Caricature class. Looking forward to that. Jeff Watts is teaching the Figure Quick Sketch. I hear it's a tough class but very rewarding. And then Ron Lemon is teaching a class on Sequential Art. I almost peed myself when I found out about that. I hope I can come up with the $1050 to do all three. It looks like it might actually work out that way. Here's praying.

--Will