Milt Gross Studies

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/milt-gross-comics-drawing-with-every.html

Old Studies

I found some very old scans, so I decided to upload them here.

Mush baby, oddly proportioned men and women, and cut off Barney Google. Man on the right looks like he four butt cheeks.

I tried to draw a Nutty Mad in a new pose.

I'll try to see if I can dig up some more.

Willard Mullin

I've been practicing a little bit of Willard Mullin this week. There's a great energy in his work that I really enjoy. His figures have a certain elegance about them, but they're still drawn funny and manly, in a way where the drawings are not drawn just for the sake of elegance. He seems to have an incredibly extensive knowledge of human anatomy, as well as cloth and folds. It's with this knowledge that he's able to draw the forms so loosely, and you can see that in his sketches. Unfortunately, I don't have the same grasp of information which Mullin had, but I think studying what he studied, and studying him with more carefulness is a good idea.

I didn't get the force in this drawing among a bunch of other things. Mullin's drawing is really incredible, the upper torso has a life of its own.

I can say much for this one too, but I'm going to keep trying.

Sorry about the cut and paste job on the pics, I have a small scanner and I'm doing these drawings on animation paper.

Some More Studies

I don't think I've got it yet. Broader shapes would have been better too. Looking at the photos in a reduced size makes me see all kinds of new things I couldn't see before when I looked at the image up close. I need to try this more.

Point Head

This is still too conservative for my taste and non-exaggerated. This was done after a few other studies of the head and I still want to take it further. The problem for me is balancing and managing the design after exaggerating several of the head's elements. Also, realistic subjects have all kinds of subtle soft planes that dissolve into one another and aren't mathematical. You wouldn't want to draw all of that for animation, so it seems more attention to line and space, which implies form will be worth looking into.

Paste On Eyes

Thought I'd upload this before I ruin it any further. A lot of my studies are really overworked. I guess that's me trying to find shapes. Anyway, I should probably stop with the shading too. I try to to turn them into design elements, but I don't think that's necessary if I want to apply these shapes to animation. And yeah, I found the structure of her face more interesting than her hair, but I'd like to try this head some more.

By the way, all these posts are open for critique.

More Tries

I realize when I begin to caricature I can't exaggerate as much as I would like to, so it takes a couple of tries before I can really begin to play around with the shapes. Some of that has to do with understanding the shapes from the source, or a fear of drawing new shapes and resorting to shapes I know. I think that's the worst way to go about doing this kind of drawing, especially when the point is to invent new shapes. The bottom drawing is kind of a weird hybrid of realistic with some exaggeration, but not really any simplification. Still trying to find balance and contrasts, and hopefully the more I do this the better I can get at understanding these things.

Prisoners

Trying to create contrasts with broad shapes, and work on balance and overall design.

And this? This thing is the result of far too many expectations of what it should look like. It's chalk full of lies, and the only way I'll defeat it is by showing it to the world.

Howie Comp Study

Fixed a few things along the way. I focus way too much on one aspect of my own drawings instead of planning everything out first. In my previous post I thumbnailed everything, but a lot of my shapes still ended up flat while trying to preserve them in the final outcome. I feel more comp practice will help, and I'll probably end up using pre-made characters, as opposed to my own for now, just so I can work with functional designs.

An Experiment

Just trying some stuff out.

Caricatures from Last Summer

I found these a little while ago. They're from my summer cruise. I like certain things about them, but they've still got some lies in them.

Floating Heads and Upper Bodies

Some very old, and some kind of new.