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.