A peak inside Coach’s Sketch Book – 002

Here we are, a second peak into Coach’s sketchbook.
No time to waste let’s get right to it.

A continuation of the previous post’s exercises, this is Land of a 1000 Heads – Doggie Edition! Don’t know what to draw? Do Land of 1000 heads under the restraints of a theme! Restraints might not be the best word, I actually found it freeing to specify a species and play within that realm only. Some are more anthropomorphized than others, one is even a muscular Sherif! Try this exercise with cats, fish, woodland creatures, bears – heck, do aliens, trolls, dragons…. whatever your heart desires, but… FILL THE PAGE!

There is a companion video to go along with this and you can watch it here on Cartoon Coach TV!

This is another exercise, where I did not know what I was going to draw, so I drew 4 bizarre looking shapes and began to build out from there. Slowly these Furry Aquatic Creatures began to take form. Once I had my basic structure/gesture down, I began fleshing them out.

Hope you enjoy the time lapse video!

I was about to plan my lesson in perspective and decided to draw this Castle to see if there was a way I could simplify the idea of perspective to a lesson that was more focussed on building and less on horizon lines and vanishing points. These, of course, are the most important part of accurate perspective, but some of my artists are only but Padawan Learners and I wanted to ease them into this stuff. Additionally, being able to eyeball perspective is a skill in itself.

So as I drew this Castle, still a work in progress, it occurred to me that stacking, that early childhood developmental stage, would be a great way to start. Rather than worry about lining up all your edges with vanishing points, we focused on building blocks in every direction. Up, Down, Forward, Backwards and to the sides of an object.

Which brings us to our last entry in the post…

This is an original piece, although I drew inspiration from an image I saw on Pinterest, unfortunately I cannot locate it again or I would include a link here, if I find it I will amend this post.

This is an example of the lesson plan, my artists did over the past 2 sessions. Stacking objects, eyeballing perspective and building out a cool Space Boat! I had a very positive reaction from the students over this lesson and I’m loking forward to next week when we start designing an Evil Lair in the side of a mountain.

This drawing was started with Col-Erase pencils, penciled with a mechanical 2B graphite pencil, inked with Micron Markers and a Pentel Brush Pen, coloured with Copic Markers and a White Gel Pen for highlights.

Until next time…

…DRAW EVERY DAY!