X-Attachments: C:\nose_cone_for_road.jpg; 

 

June 30th 2001
(picture below)



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YouCanDraw.com's Insider Communiqué


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In today's issue:

1) Question about using media other than pencil from member John Beales of
    Elizabeth City, North Carolina

2) Very brief look at breaking down the face into primitive forms: starting with
   the nose

3) Reviewing the very user-friendly usage rights

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1) Member John Beales writes:

"I have noticed different caricature artists using markers, pastels, pens etc. I am
interested in using pastels as well as others...In any of the course do you teach
working in different mediums?"

ANS:  Great question John Getting a firm idea for the basic elements - like line,
light and shadow, angles, proportion, perspective - learning those is job number
one - but you can experiment in whatever medium you wish (my favorite is
watercolor).

Once you get a feel for what the basics are, color becomes an immediate
offshoot. An offshoot of what you might ask? An offshoot most specifically of
recognizing shadows, shadow shapes and tones/values/shades within those
shadows and shadow shapes. Shadow tones and values are just different "colors"
of gray. It's all a matter of observation. With that under your belt  - that is,
learning to differentiate different shades of gray - it's easiest to start working
into color using or pastels or pens or paints (but again - you can and ought
 to experiment any time you get the whim:-) .

Lesson 9 is gives you a pretty thorough walk through of using shadows, highlights
and recognizing shadows as shapes. See lesson 9 (even though it says "lesson
10") on-line at:

http://ycdinsiders.digitalchainsaw.com/InsidersArtistLoft/lesson10.htm

So to really answer your question John, I don't get too deep into color - but by
learning the basics, you can make the leap.

Please feel free to throw any questions you might have at me as you go John. I'll
do my best to answer them (if you want to mail something for evaluation - feel free
to do that too :-) emailing a copy is ok too as long as it's under 100 kb. (that's
pretty small - but big enough to see what you're doing).

So dive on in and don't be afraid!  - thanks again for your question.



2) Primitive forms and constructing the face and head in three dimensions


We were just talking about shadows and colors and shadow shapes above, and
that's a great lead in to the next section here. When you're drawing, you're generally
reducing the three dimensional world "out there" to the two dimensions of the paper.
How does the mind recognize three dimensions on two dimensional paper? The short
answer? Three different ways, through: 1) proportion, 2) perspective and
3) shadowing.


Geometric Forms

In June 5th's Communiqué we talked about geometric forms (not to worry new
members, the archives will be updated this month and you'll have access to all the
old e-zines and caricatures). When constructing a face or head, the ability to see
it and reduce it to geometric forms is a great technique. For instance, seeing the
face as a construct of five different 3-d shapes helps you to instantly perceive a
person's underlying bone structure (yep, just like x-ray vision!)

[See lesson 14, section 7 for an in-depth exploration of these five building blocks
of the face: http://ycdinsiders.digitalchainsaw.com/InsidersArtistLoft/section7a.htm ]


Five main building blocks of the face

Those five main building blocks of the face: the forehead, cheekbones, nose, maxilla,
and jaw can be reduced further to some combination of the "primitive forms". What
are the main three dimensional primitive forms? They're the sphere, the cube, the
cone, and the cylinder.


What's the use of that?

The beauty of recognizing these forms within the features and parts of the face
is at least two-fold. First, when you know how to draw the different primitive
geometric shapes, you instantly have a built-in template in your brain to build from.
(If you're just beginning it's this referencing you want to avoid - if you're just beginning learning to see what is in front of you is always your first task.)

Seeing these forms in your subject helps speed up your drawing because you
know for instance, an elliptical shape can be derived from a sphere, a cone from
combining a triangle and a cylinder - and again, the face can be reduced to all
of these.


Light, geometric shapes and your drawings

More importantly, if you understand how light responds and behaves on the different
geometric forms and you know the source the light hitting your subject is coming
from, it's a slam dunk:  you can recognize instantly where on a face the shadows
ought to be falling. That way you can look for them, you'll know where to find them and thus correctly place them in your drawing - adding tremendously to it's three
dimensional appearance.


See the attached illustration

In the attached illustration check out the shape of the cone on the left and see if
you can't visualize it within the caricatured nose on the right. Squint - this will
help to collapse the detail into identifiable shapes.

 




3) Usage rights

As of late we've had a couple questions about usage rights of the caricatures. Here's
the reprinted statement from the Art Gallery:

http://ycdinsiders.digitalchainsaw.com/InsidersArtistLoft/insidersArtGallery.html


Expanded Usage Policy - we're small business friendly

Expanded Usage PolicyExpanded Usage Policy:
Again if you want to use the caricatures for personal use, you can pretty much do
whatever you like. If you use them for anything else (commercial, ads, newsletters),
AND you're a small business (by small business I mean a sole proprietorship or a
"mom and pop" outfit), that's fine too.

If you write your own e-zine - and you're a small 1 or 2 person outfit - that's usually
no problem. If you write a company newsletter and the purpose of your newsletter
is to pass around information within the company and it's not a revenue producing
publication, that's fine too!


Give Attribution
In either case, all I ask in return is you keep the "Courtesy of www.YouCanDraw.com"
or some facsimile of it intact.

If you do remove it, then all I ask is you do is make a clear attribution statement
somewhere easily associated with the picture stating that the picture is from
"YouCanDraw.com". Remember, other artists will charge several hundred dollars
or more - much more - for a similar arrangement. If there is no "Courtesy of
YouCanDraw.com" written on the picture, it's up to you to print the attribution or
acknowledge nearby the picture so people will have no doubt it's from YouCanDraw.com. That's pretty straight ahead.

Call if you have questions
If you're questioning whether you fall into the "small business" category as outlined
above - or as something else - call us to clear up any confusions: (310/676-2998).

Why am I willing to do this?

I've included the samples mainly as a drawing/learning aid. The other side of it is this:
if you use them it's free advertising for me - and possibly an inexpensive "work around"
for you while you're getting your drawing skills up to speed. We both benefit. ;-)

If you have any questions about the commercial or editorial status of what you're doing, just give me a call at 310/676-2998 and we'll figure it out. I'll probably lean towards generosity just by virtue of your calling. For non-commercial uses I won't do these for less than 100 dollars a piece - if I have time to do them at all. For commercial
purposes I'll do these for 3 to 15 times that if they're individually commissioned.


Dang! That got long. So keep on drawing, all of you in the states have a great and
safe fourth of July weekend! And Happy Fourth of  July to the rest of the world too.

Warmly

Jeff K.

 


Jeffrey O. Kasbohm
Executive Director
http://www.YouCanDraw.com