25 February, 2002 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your 25 February, 2002 YouCanDraw.com Communiqué |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Howdy all! Today I thought I'd just review a gang of other excellent drawing education sites, caricature sites, cartoon sites and general art sites - in no particular order but all small gold mines of information and great pictures. As I sped around the web for ideas, I just got inspired seeing all the great art work and information that's available. Believe me, this is only the tip of the tip of the tip of the tip of the ice berg (there were 1,480,000 pages Google called up in response to a "how to draw" search. Check 'em out: DrawingClass.com by Sean Farrell excellent class on composition and illustration for students - though as I return to it, I see the proprietor no longer allows the free download. He will be offering a CD-ROM version shortly, but it’ a site to keep your eye on (you can still find the downloads available below at the World's Artist Directory) : http://www.drawingclass.com/ Which is a great lead in for a caricaturist/illustrator of growing renown: Ed Steckley I just get inspired by this guy's work - especially the Cindy Crawford piece (I saw the original in San Diego 2 years ago - very impressive: http://www.steckleystudios.com/cindycrawford.html or Michelle Pfeifer: http://www.steckleystudios.com/pfeiffer.html Take your time browsing Ed’s site and really study his pictures - take the same approach we've been preaching here: evaluate the pictures feature by feature first - compare noses to noses, compare each nose, or ear, or chin, or eye, or dimple or shape of the head, or hair piece, or side-of-the-nose shadow to the “ideal” of Mr. Average (or even your version) of Mr. Average (or even Mr. and Mrs. Perfect). Ask yourself is it bigger, wider, smoother, rounder, more geometric, skinnier, fatter etc., here’s the home page: http://www.steckleystudios.com/index.asp Master of minimalist line drawings: Al Hirschfield Need I say more? : http://www.alhirschfeld.com/ Pencil drawing To continue along the confines of pencil art (because pencil and line drawing is the parent of all other realistic visual art - it’s where ALL the masters cut their teeth) Learn to draw with a pencil and everything else follows - a master from the Far East: Studio 69 - make sure you check out the galleries (a short ways down from the top). This gentleman has an amazing affinity for pencil and line drawings and is an outright master of “finger tip fading and smearing” - you know, where you take your finger and blend those penciled shadows into airbrushed perfection: http://go.to/studio69 For the business end of the business: The Drawing Board For those of you interested in the business end of illustration and with an interest in more than just caricaturing: The Drawing Board - there’s always something to be learned from any aspect of one art and even more to be learned when you start “cross-pollinating” into other less related industries and arts. Check out this resource (some great links on the “links” page): http://members.aol.com/thedrawing/ More on Caricature More mainstream media in orientation and less pencil drawings but nonetheless inspiring, checkout “Celebrity Caricature in America”: http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/caricatures/ The World Artist’s Directory Here’s a general art link: the World Artist’s Directory - they've removed a few of the pictures - but many sections have links to the homesites of other artists. You can get an entire rounded art education by just reading about the kinds of things people draw/make art out of and the different categories of art: http://worldartistdirectory.com/ They also have an art critique section where you can submit your art - be it mixed media, film, even music for comment: http://artcritiquegallery.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi and they also have a free downloadable drawing lesson: (In fact this is the lesson you can no longer download at the Sean Farrell site at the top of this page! I'd get there before Mr. Farrell finds out :-) : http://worldartistdirectory.com/drawing.html World wide drawing classes For other drawing classes available all over the country, the continent, and the world click on the next link and type in “drawing” with “art” in the search category: http://elearners.com/gna/courses.htm NYU There’s bunch of neat links at this page at New York University: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/miller/guide/contents.html For example here’s a very middle-age/renaissance styled picture, but if you compare the quality of line in this picture (link just below) to that of the art at Studio 69 above or to some of Ed Steckley’s drawings, you'll see the continuum of line use - how similar (and how different) pencil can be used across all styles of drawing: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/miller/guide/blchlk.html Cartoons - “Cartoon Dave” Hackett has a cartoon drawing book offering: http://www.cartoondave.com/book.html And while we’re on cartoons, check out Randy Glasbergen’s book at: http://www.borg.com/~rjgtoons/draw.html MANGA ...and then this cartoon “How to draw Manga” lesson: http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/tutorial/rei_tutorial.html ...and yet another cartoon drawing lesson: http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/tutorial/rowen_tutorial.html and another: http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/tutorial/stutorial1.html and another: http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/tutorial/elly_tutorial.html (We won't get into the “caricature versus cartoon” debate. Suffice it to say there’s a region where the difference is very thin.) These “Manga” pages offer some simple, fun, uncomplicated and actually quite good short lessons.) My recommendation is print out some of these pictures and flip them upside down. Better yet, tape them upside down (so you can see the picture but they’re literally upside down) and draw them upside down. This is great practice for getting into the drawing mode. Figure Drawing - Here’s a really informative site that concentrates on figure drawing (some inoffensive nudity): http://figuredrawings.com/learn.html And here’s some online lessons - learning to draw faces the Benecelli way: http://www.wetcanvas.com/ArtSchool/Portraiture/DrawFaces/ Now, to get you geared back into drawing celebrities from pictures, see: http://homepages.tesco.net/~p.wilkinson/ All these samples were drawn using the “grid” approach. ...Which you can get a lot of practice in Lesson 15, - Ani DiFranco - especially in Part IV : http://ycdinsiders.digitalchainsaw.com/InsidersArtistLoft/ani_difranco_part_4.htm And last but not least... Kristen Ulve - Entertainment weekly artist for an economy of style that walks the line between caricature, cartoon and illustration: http://www.kirstenulve.com/caricatures.html So hopefully there's enough information there folks to keep you interested. Maybe in the next issue we can drum up some marketing sites or ideas - we've had several requests as of late to give this another look. Take care and keep on drawing! Warmly, Executive Director (952) 920-9827 6920 Southdale Road Minneapolis, MN 55435 http://www.YouCanDraw.com "Once and for all getting you drawing faces and caricatures" mailto:comments@youcandraw.com
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