Year of the rabbit

Here are a few preliminary sketches for the Year of the rabbit shirt that I was asked to design for the Taoist Tai Chi Society. I designed their year of the tiger shirt last year and rumor has it...it was a hit, being their best selling T-shirt to date.  That is a lot to live up too. A guy like me with a nickname like 'bunny' shouldn't have a hard time designing a year of the rabbit shirt after all.

So do I go for cute, graphic, realistic, conservative? Je ne sais pas......

Got to hand it to 'em

 Yeah, more hands. Now, that was in NO way an exercise in futility. I challenge anyone who likes to draw or past, present or future student of animation to practice by drawing Preston Blair styled hands. If you don't have a reference book, use my sketches to work from.......... no excuses, get to it!

Great reference to have and it was good practice at my craft.
Now to move onto mudras maybe even int he Preston  Blair style.

Give me a hand

Preston Blair hands. Always a useful thing to practice and even more useful to master if you are an animator. I think it was John K., creator of Ren and Stimpy, who recommended drawing an entire page of Preston Blair hands. So, I did some last night.

The method is to draw a circle, add an area for fingers and a thumb so it looks like a mitten. Add a bit more flesh around a thumb. Then flesh the rest out. It is also extremely useful to draw cartoon hans by looking at real hands.

In the meadow...

...we can build a snowman.

I'm sort of getting into the holiday spirit, but only because a vacation is near and I'm looking forward to seeing my family. I figured I'd use my Copics and Prismacolor and spend a little more time on a drawing in full color in my sketchbook.

 Here it is after night one, before heading to bed. I just couldn't commit to color at this point so this is all done in copic. The next day I found my prismacolor and completed the drawing below.

Brrrrrrrrrr.  I think I may do a little more blending later on the backgroun snow to smooth it out.

Whacky indeed

The other day I was reading the news and there was this story about a peodphelia ring that got busted. It turns out one of the head guys was a part time clown. Need another reason to hate clowns? How fitting. I did a quick sketch and used office markers and supplies to make it a little more appealing.  Below is a whackybox drawn in HB but entirely without a ruler.

Topless fairy girl

Here are some sketched I did while watching some animations after work last night while waiting for my dinner to cook.  I didn't want to ink this on in because my copics bleed through this particular sketchbook paper and I don't want my blue lined figures (yesterday's post) being obliterated in the process.

figuratively speaking of course

Worked with my newest addition to drawing and animating tools..... the  Color ENO 0.7 red, green and blue (RGB) mechanical pencils by Pilot. Yes, they come in many, many more colors, but these aren't for coloring like pencil crayons,  but for planning pose to pose animation and doing preliminary planning sketches. The best part is, is that thy are refillable mechanical pencils!

Here are some sketches I did while studying Chris Hart's Figure It Out! The Beginners Guide to Drawing People. And boy do I feel like a beginner. There are so many good helpful hints and explanations to make drawing figures easier. I just want to be able to do it without a model or reference. even better would be able to do it with my eyes closed. Some can, and they have an amazing knowledge of anatomy.

Up in the corner is a reference to BOTERO and somehow it developed into this Metropolis~esque construction. I am a little nervous about drawing an inking it in.