Three-quarters Rear View, and Near-profiles

Circa 2001, a youthful assistant of mine was transferring a rough layout onto bristol board for me and remarked, "You know, I've never drawn someone from behind before." I was surprised and amused at the time. I almost didn't have the heart to haze him for his lack of experience. But traditions are traditions.

So what about those times when you have to draw someone whose face is turned mostly away from you? Not so easy, is it, Charlie?

The most common and most natural impulse is to indulge in a tad of speculative fakery. But this yields drawings that seem the sum of what one doesn't know, and lack the power to persuade. I was genuinely trying hard when I sketched these, but... well, I'll ask you to tell me what seems wrong with them.

Ever seeking chances to use a little research to save time and communicate our worlds more convincingly, we will review some photographic examples of the sometimes-surprising juxtapositions of features that nature hid right under our noses. Or rather, on the other side of our heads from our noses. 

Clearly, it was with such conundra in mind that God helpfully invented other people to refer to, and later, cameras.

I will seek your observations about these pictures, which again come mostly from my musty trove of late-'80s catalog clippings. 

As we go through these, let's note how far the head is turned and where the camera was positioned above or below the head's equator.

What in anything about these pix flouts your expectations?

John

Note that we have an edge-on view of her ear.

"Elvis, is that you, in the sky?" Many an excitable South American had trouble sleeping on <El Noche de Elvis Gigantico  Sobre El Atlantico>"

Jack Hamm

Jack Hamm

Jack Hamm breaks it down for you.

Sometimes these views lead to pleasing cartoonish simplicity, a la Alex Toth. 

A-a-almost a profile on Bra Lady.
"He's crazy about my kids and he drinks Johnnie Walker!" (actual headline) 

Blurry yes, but again, so appealingly simple!

Hamm for dessert.
(BTW, he didn't stir himself to give the same treatment to male heads. Are we so dull?)

Time to Work

OK, let's start analyzing these with our pencils, drawing through. Try please to infer the cranium's contour, even if there is hair or an inconvenient crop. Drawing through, approximate the how the horizontal and vertical half-way lines wrap around the skull shape. The farther above or below the equator is, the more that equator and the other dividers will be drawn curvingly.

NEXT TIME --

By request, I will try to say several useful things about "blocking" scenes, and paneling and framing decisions. Preview: I'll say "vary" a lot. 

Crazy about you nutty kids.

Till then,

John

P.S.: Since I mentioned Toth, here is a self-portrait he did in 1958. The beauty and economy of these clothing folds made me want to punish myself. (The faded-to-red lines show he was using a felt-tip pen of some kind. I honestly wouldn't have guessed they such 60 years ago.)
The casual, assured minimalism of this blows my mind.

Button Makers of the World!

Hi, Everybody.
Are you going to make buttons for the Comics Fest on May13? Are you just considering it? Either way, please visit this link to UMakeButtons and download the templates for the graphic formats you're likeliest to submit your finished files in.
Call or email me if you have any questions or problems and I'll get you an answer. I'll be talking with them tomorrow and a competitor and will know more. I want to try to make this easy for you guys.
We will have a button machine at the bookstore in the run-up to the Fest. I'll pay for the rental, but you guys will have to pay for the materials. Sound fair?

Cheers,
John

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Hi, Everybody!

I updated the preceding entry with some stuff I misplaced, so it's probably worth checking out again. Also an important note about the latest assignment (I.e., Don't do it!) You can't miss the new parts; they're in red.

Our next sesh will be on drawing heads from behind. PLUS other glories yet unplanned.

Then next week, we'll move on to the conundrums Sketch and Jon raised last time: Blocking scenes, getting characters to look convincing in spaces and choosing how to move the characters around in those spaces to show the story.

That reminds me: I've decided that much like the clothes I posted last week, "storytelling" has had its day. From now on its "Storyshowing™." I mean, really. Every freshman writing prof lays down this  nugget of deservedly eternal wisdom: "Show it; don't tell it" and those kids can't even draw.


John

"Storyshowing™" and its attendant markings,  logotypes, and resulting impressions, emotions and genomes are fully owned trademarks of John Heebink Artiste Corp, Inc. World rights reserved. Violators will be violated. Prosecutors will be persecuted and electrocuted.

"Clothes in Action" --UPDATED

This week's homework, due Mar. 31:

Print out the simplified head sculptures from Loomis at the bottom here. Add the facial features and do your best to work out how they might be shadowed. 

Let’s wait on this! I think the art and instructions I prepared for this are flawed. I’ll do a new one for next week.

P. S.:

I added the two pieces of art I'd wanted but accidentally left out. Scroll all the way down.

Session notes, Mar 17:

This started with my trying to help a friend with this clothes-dependent drawing:
I quickly ran up against against the limits of my own feel for the material (heh-heh).
I dug back into the file I'd kept in the late '80s (!) on clothes in action. Now clothes were very different then, especially in their roominess. But the principles, the physics, of how they work are unchanging. Please go over these examples :

OK, nobody wears sweaters like this anymore for some reason... But what do they show us about how thicker fabric affect folds?

...vs. thinner ones?

Check out the "stretch folds" on the photog's jacket. Read the directions and destinations they point to.

Very busy interplay between light and shadow here... But a very simple contour. Note;

A. That's not atypical.

B. simple silhouettes are stronger design.

She twists, the coat swings out with centrifugal force, so the folds radiate outward, spiraling, down from her shoulders.

Note how the shoulder area is padded, firmly constructed, and holds its shape. The roomy late-80s pants are free to flop around in big, "active" shapes. Overlapping action!

Feel sorry for these kids, having to go through life with those features. ;)

Let's talk about this dress, atypical though it be.

Miami Vice on horseback! The folds point at, and expire upon, the kneecap.

Thin, stretchy fabric, gathered and un-gathered.

Great folds, well lit. These are the (cotton chambray??) shirts and puka-shell necklaces real men wore in those days, if you were wondering. Don't you question me; I was there. 

Will Eisner's The Spirit was very influenced visually by film noir. The dramatic lighting and the thicker fabrics and roomier suits of that era play a major part in its look. Great thing about film noir lighting? It conveys a lot of dimension with minimal, stark, binary, dramatic visual info.

LATE ADDITIONS!.........

Jeans! You gotta know how to draw jeans. Imitate the pattern of folds here, with restraint. Note that that the staggered-diamonds pattern is most intense just at the moment the foot is fully swung forward.

A classic sleeve position... Reaching forward some, arm bent some... Note the "double-backs" of the accordion-ed parts, and beside them the arcing stretch folds, spiraling around the shoulder. Most of these lead right to a double-back.

In our in-class exercise, I cited Mike Mattesi's inspiring book FORCE, then forgot to pull it out of my book bag! Here is a link to a short video on that powerful philosophy of drawing: https://youtu.be/tYFqld6kzVA

John

This Saturday's Class

Hi Everybody.

Hope you'll make it to class this weekend. Remember it's always free to bring a friend to class for the first time.

As usual, it's at STEVENS BOOKS,49 Ocean Ave, SF
4pm Saturday

This Saturday's lesson will have to do with drawing clothes. And I don't yet know what else...

I see in my notes that someone in class mentioned this book, The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. Here's the book.

Here's a helpful  lesson from current Deadpool artist Mike Hawthorne. Working from this understanding of these shapes, it's much easier to foreshorten the arm!

Best, John

P.S.: Don't forget to plan something for:

Outline and stuff for Saturday 10 March

1. Warmup drill: Dead-hand no-lifties
2. Storytelling exercise: "Creative block," accumulation of ideas
3. Ad for store
4. Fest reminder: Getting short; time to settle on plan; table signups
5. Main Exercise: "Trace with force"
1. Find and feel footing
2. Rhythm (huh?)
3. Cross-shoulder-tops line
4. Analyze foot head relationships
5. Now exaggerate
6. If time--Ape the Honey Lemon expressions sheet with your character

Saturday March 10!

Might Morphin Power Rangers, 1995, pencils JH, inks Aaron McClellan

Hi, Everybody: 
Our Mar. 10 meeting will have topic TBD, but it's happening. Sometimes the ones where I don't have much prepared turn out to be good ones, maybe because they're shaped more by your agenda than mine.
NEWCOMERS WELCOME and FREE. Bring a comics-loving friend. MATERIALS PROVIDED. $10/session

See ya there,
John

P.S.:
Might not be to soon to let friends and family know you'd like them to turn out for this...