ULTRAIST STUDIOS

Drawing is really hard.
There’s no other way to put it.

One of my biggest regrets is not pushing my drawing skills over my post-Sheridan years. Now I’m getting old(er). Time is moving faster.

I found while doing sketching at the Toronto Comic Book Expo, that Spy Guy is a hard character to draw. I didn’t realise that before. It’s because of the simplicity. If you get the lines wrong, it shows. There isn’t a lot of detail to hide behind. Also it’s because of that trench coat. It makes it easy to turn the character into a blob. I really have to think about the forms and mass under the trench coat. Especially around the legs. That is what I was experimenting with in these doodles:

This is a sketch I did a while back while I was looking at some Shane Glines Bob G.O.M.P. drawings. I was looking at the way Shane draws his forms, and was trying to mimic it on Spy Guy. I always thought these doodles were successful. They have an appeal:

Whenever I look at stuff by artist at the top of their game (like in the links below) I get a reality check on just how far I am from the watermark I artistically aspire to, and I get a surge of energy to just try to get better. It’s hard work, but it’s work worth doing.

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels - The art of storyboarding (and more).

Walt Stanchfield - Drawing class notes from Walt Disney Studios.

Chen Yi Chang - Animation Presentation (video).

All I can really do is keep drawing. Keep pushing. Keep learning. This is something I should have done years ago. But life has a way of doing that, setting up distractions, veering things off course.

I’ve got a lot to learn.