Leaf animation

It's fall (autumn) and the leafs give us inspiration to create animation.

I used the animation program Moho, ArtRage 2, the free image editor The Gimp, DivX converter to create this test animation on my Mac.

Drawing a pentagon

If you can draw a circle and you can draw a square, you can draw an equilateral pentagon. How? Well, the first thing you have to realize is that all sides have equal length and all the angles in the equilateral pentagon are the same. If we turn the drawing so, that one of the sides of the pentagon is horizontal, we call that side the base side. The two adjacent sides have an angle that is less sharp than in case of a square, so they point—so to speak—outwards. The two other sides that are further away from the base side, point inwards and close the pentagon, by joining just above the center of the base side. If you turn the pentagon over one fifth of a full turn in the drawing plane, the next side becomes the base side, and the same relationships apply to its closest two neighbor sides and the remaining two sides. You can check this by turning your drawing and adjust until it looks right from all five sides.

Of course, this takes a lot of time, so the next step is to do this without physically turning the drawing, but, instead, doing this in your mind's eye. This exercise will learn you to see proportions. You can check if you drew a perfect pentagon with the method described earlier.

In fact, this is the way I draw my squares now. Making the angles straight (perpendicular) and all sides equal in length in my mind's eye, and then checking if the proportions are correct by turning the drawing in the drawing plane. This is a simple exercise to get a feeling for proportions. Drawing a pentagon is just a little more complicated, and will fine-tune your feeling for proportions even more.

A circle is a bit more complicated than a square, but not as complicated as a pentagon. If you draw the top, bottom and side points of the circle, drawing a circle is so much easier. Of course, you should always check before drawing the circle, if those four points are drawn at the proper positions. Are the imaginary line piece connecting the top and bottom points and the imaginary line piece connecting the left and right points perpendicular to each other, and do they have a common center point? These are some of the tricks I discovered while drawing squares and circles.

Drawing and learning how to draw is doing several things simultaneously. I have started to read a copy of the book "The Joy of Drawing" by Bill Martin (ISBN 0-8230-2370-2). The first chapter has some great tips on what to draw with and what different ways there are to hold a pencil, and what's its use in drawing. The chapter deals with other useful things for beginners as well. I will not repeat those things, and leave it entirely up to you to buy the book or not. You might have a look at Amazon for book reviews to help you decide.

Headturn

For this headturn I needed to draw only 3 images, and could 2 other images by mirroring. Nevertheless, it took quite a lot time to make.

Having a little fun with Artrage 2

I made this doodle of a cartoon head in Artrage 2. Nothing fancy, but fun to play with. I wanted to blow it up to a full size drawing. I clipped it to size in my image editor (using an exported PNG image) and used that as a tracing image in Artrage 2.

The result was this nice cartoon drawing. Nothing fancy, but a lot of fun doing it. And that is the point. Sometimes you just have to have some fun drawing, with nothing on your mind and without trying to create a "quality drawing".

Drawing more squares

My squares are getting better by the day...



I'm setting up a new video rig, with the camera hanging over the workspace. The lighting is not good yet, but I'll buy some wall spots soon to get perfect lighting.

Drawing a circle in Artrage 2

Drawing a circle isn't easy. The trick seems to be to keep rotating the canvas until the circle looks proportionally about right.

The screen was captured on a Mac using Snapz Pro X 2 in the evaluation period. I used Artrage 2 and a Wacom Intuos 3 (6x8) digitizer tablet.

Drawing a square

As you might have realized by watching the video, I'm not very good at drawing. However, with some tricks it is possible to draw a square (well sort of). Often, if I draw my squares without measuring, they are either too wide or too narrow. I guess practice makes perfect.

Another way of checking is to keep turning the drawing 90 degrees (a quarter of a full turn) and back in the same plane as the drawing, and visually inspect if all sides are equal in length. Alas, my current video setup doesn't allow me to take shots from above. I'm looking for a better video setup, but for now I settle for a tripod and placing a sketchbook vertically on a table against the wall.

Cartoony drawing

This is my first shot at cartoons after I started drawing circles. Not too bad. I have the book by Preston Blair about cartoon drawing (translated version). Perhaps I should try some examples from that book.

Drawing something more complicated

Here is an attempt to draw something more complicated. It was a four layered drawing in ArtRage 2, from bottom to top: background color, "texture"e; of the background, color of object, drawing of object. This drawing was from memory. It is actually a desk lamp, without the lamp holder.

Digital versus analogue drawing

Drawing on a sheet of paper is definitely different from drawing with a stylus on an art tablet and a computer screen. There is no direct connection with the computer, compared to the pencil and paper, only an indirect connection. Your brain has to make the translation. So you have to get used to this type of drawing.

The advantage is that you have suddenly an enormous wealth of media at your disposal. Okay, it's not as cheap as paper and pencil, afterall, you need a computer, an art tablet and a natural media drawing program, but the advantages outway the disadvantages. I can understand why so many artist go digital.

You've probably noticed that I've started drawing squares as well and filled some of the shapes with color. I think I have improved much from yesterday's drawing, but I still have a lot of practicing to do before I start drawing objects, using simple shapes to construct those images.

That's all for now, see you later!

Circles, circles, circles

Wow, I wasn't aware that drawing a circle is so difficult!

I was using ArtRage 2, by Ambient Design, and a Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet, so I could show you some of my circles. I'm right-handed and some of the circles are drawn clockwise and some counterclockwise, and a few are drawn with my left hand. The Intuos 3 and ArtRage 2 are a good combination for drawing natural media.

It's obvious that I still need a lot of practice, both with pencil and paper, and stylus and artpad.

Bye and until next time.

Tags: artwork

The humble beginning

I want to be able to draw animation, but I can't draw. I'm sure that question gets asked more than often. And in my case this particular same question keeps popping up in my head. I like to watch animation, although I'm older than 40. I like it so much, I want to do it myself. Not as a career, but just to entertain myself.

But where to begin?

It is obvious that if you can't draw, there is no point in trying to animate, at least, not the cartoon animation I want to draw. After some searching on the Net, I found this little site:

• Drawing 101

Lesson one tries to explain that drawing is actually seeing thing in basic shapes and construct those shapes into the form you want to draw. That seems obvious. If something is complicated, just make it simpler, less complicated. So, no surprises there.

Lesson two tells you before you can construct the complex form out of basic shapes, you'll need to be able to draw these simple shapes:

• circle (which is a ball in three dimensions)
• square (which is a cube in three dimensions)
• triangle (which can be a pyramid or a cone in three dimensions)
• cylinder (wich is a cross between a circle and a rectangle)

Now the author of the site tells something important he learned in artschool. When you want to be able to draw complex shapes, you should first be able to draw simple shapes. If you're not able to draw simple shapes, there is no point in drawing the complex ones.

Here's the exercise he gives his online pupils:

Beginners should practice drawing these simple shapes daily. Start out with the circles- draw big ones, small ones, circles within circles, fill up the entire page and most importantly- stay loose and IN CONTROL! Once you feel comfortable with circles, move onto the next shape- like a square or box. Take your time in learning these shapes- if you can't draw simple shapes, then there's no point in moving on! Once you feel condfident that you can draw any shape at ease, try constructing ordinary household items, like a TV, or a chair, a table, computer, radio, etc. Remembe- sometimes you have to go back to the basics just to move ahead!

If we see past the spelling errors (perhaps the author is dyslectic), this is actually very good advice, which I haven't seen in any of the drawing books (perhaps it was in there, and I simply read over it). So that's just what I will be doing... drawing circles until I drop, and then some more...

Bye, until next time.

Tags: drawing_101