Early cartoon for my syndicate

I decided to get a head start on my syndicate cartoons this week. I knew that I wanted to do something on the start of the 2008 football season (my favorite time of year BTW), and as I was watching the Olympics last night, this image just popped into my head. Enjoy.

Sunday's Figure Drawings

We had a GREAT drawing class yesterday. It's been about 2 1/2 weeks since we were able to draw from the figure, so it was good to get back. Also, it was our favorite model, so that helped. We started out with 30 second gestures, moved to 3 minute poses, graduated to 25 minute drawings, and finished with (1) long seated pose (I drew the skeleton that floats around the classroom as a warm up to get the figurative proportions of head/chest/hips in my mind before starting in on the figure).

I decided to work back into one of these a bit in Photoshop with the dodge and burn tools. This was an interesting experiment, and I may do some more of this in the future.

Looks like these are all clickable this time, so click away for a larger view!

And, for those of you peeking in on this blog, be sure to tell your friends about me, and leave a quick note if you are so inclined. I look forward to hearing from you. Sometimes when I get little to no response here, I wonder if I'm wasting my time. -Ed

New Study for Sci-Fi Illustration

I found this really cool "shedded" shell of an insect stuck to the side of my house. I thought that it would make a cool illustration if this bug was like as tall as a building and had some man made elements on his body. This is just the first sketch before I really dive into this drawing, but I thought it was interesting, so I'm posting it.

Here's the bug.

And the first sketch.

And a posterized version done in Photoshop. I'll work back into this drawing much more before I decide if this is the final pose I want. Looks like he'll have mechanical legs and some type of explosive device strapped to his belly. Stay tooned.

-Ed

Proportion Studies

I finished all of my cartoons early this week, so I decided to do a couple of exercises from my Manga book. We've got figure drawing class on Sunday, so, these are really good warm-up exercises. They help me to stay sharp in terms of figurative proportions. I've mentioned this here before, but it's important to understand the geometry of the figure. It can be scientifically broken down into segments (approx. 8 heads high). Manga is really good at exploiting these proportions, so this exercise works for me. I think it would be good for any kind of artist to study the Manga technique. I fought it for a long time because I thought it was too "kiddie." But once I saw what they were trying to do, it actually ended up helping my figure drawings from life. I'll post my drawings from class here on Sunday night or Monday morning. Thanks for peeking in, and BTW, I've got a cool little Chat box now on this page. Scroll down to the bottom right column and leave me a "shout."

Happy weekend!

-Ed

Local toon - with a dog...

I haven't posted much of my local stuff lately, so I'll put one up today. Seems there's a rate increase on the horizon for Clay County utility customers. I figured with all the talk about people going green these days that this was befitting to the situation. My buddy Clay Jones once told me that if you put a dog in your cartoon, you're golden. I don't know if he counted on a Golden Retriever being used as a source for hydro-electric power. Anyway Clay, if you're "Google Alerting" yourself (and I know that you are) - CLAY JONES! That should get him over here. Beats a high-pitched whistle any day.

A funny thing happened on my way to the drawing board

I remembered that there is a major oil pipeline that runs through Southern Georgia. I'm glad I went with this idea too; first off because no one else has picked up on it, and secondly because if you just draw a bear eating Georgians, it's a little "thin" in terms of getting to the reasons behind the invasion. As with the US, it's all about dwindling oil supplies, and I'm sure Putin saw this as a golden opportunity. That's right, I said Putin. Don't ever doubt that he's still running things.

No Sunday sketch this week...

Our Sunday figure drawing class was cancelled this week. Something about the studio floor needing refinishing? So, I spent Sunday night doodling in the sketchbook. And it wasn't a total waste either. I got a couple of pretty cool characters out of it, along with a panda illustration for my syndicate. My wife LOVES pandas, so I know she's gonna get a total kick out of this one as well. Enjoy.

We did it to ourselves

America's lust for stuff on the cheap has put us in a bit of a bind. We built up China; fed the machine for the last decade, and now we find ourselves the exporters of nothing more than big, discounted automobiles, a failed capitalist ideology, and crappy hip-hop music. We're no longer the spend-happy consumers we once were. As our belts have tightened, the Chinese have loosened theirs, and there ain't a thing we can do about it.

One more thing: This weekend, as you watch the Olympics, keep in mind that it's being hosted by a Government that seized land, kicked the homeowners off their property, and then bulldozed the homes to make room for that lovely building those athletes are competing in. Communism and Capitalism - what a lovely mix!

$cooter$

Man, I wish I was in the scooter business right about now. Evidently you can't buy a Vespa; they're flying off the showroom floors so fast. Anyway, we ran a story last here week about scooter stores at the beach running out of inventory, and then, this morning, I noticed this story in USA Today reflecting the exact same trend all over the country.

Here's the cartoon.

More Bridgman stuff

A while back, I was doing some exercises from George Bridgman's classic book on life drawing. In going back through my sketchbook, I found a couple of these that had never been posted. And since I'm focusing again on caricature, I thought it might be helpful to post them here now. Bridgman basically breaks the skull and head down into distinguishable shapes and cylinders that can easily be drawn in many different poses and perspectives. You can see how a head starts to form from these shapes in the lower-left drawing.

More on this later, as I work up an Obama and McCain caricature for my syndicate this week.

Ed's new mystery software...

I'm not gonna tell you which program I just bought, but suffice it to say, I like it. Here's a quick (20 minute) down-and-dirty pirate concept drawing I just did with it, and then finished up in Photoshop. The thing I like most about this program is that it so closely mimics the hand drawn "feeling." The pen drags on the Wacom tablet in much the same way a pencil, or eraser, or brush does. I know this sounds weird, but it really does feel like you're drawing on paper. And, most importantly, it allows you to get your ideas down quickly. This is a very liberating experience for a digital tool.

Enjoy.