Some more life-drawing. By next week I hope to have a few actual comics to show you guys, namely my submission for Stumptown Underground’s Religion & Spirituality issue and my submission for Hazel Newlevant’s “Ultimate Sadness” anthology. I really need to draw my butt off this week.

I’ve really learned a lot recently from Michael Mattesi‘s excellent guide Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators, though I’m still figuring out how to put it into practice. Though I’d always though that, while you’re in the studio, your life-drawing should be as “realistic” as possible, and that you should only “cartoonify” what you’ve learned later on, Mattesi gives the opposite recommendation: cartoon/caricature “as you go” so that you bring out the most important aspects of the model or pose. In that drawing above, I deliberately widened the trunk of the body by about 20%, just to emphasize the smug, masculine confidence of the pose. I also caricatured the face and gave him a cigarette. I think it’s very interesting how you can do this and still be very faithful to what’s in front of your eyes – I feel I’m only scratching the surface here. I’ve only just discovered Mattesi’s incredible video blog and website.