Flight

drawing some fairies. i used to draw this way naturally, but have been "tainted" by the animation industry, so to go back to this style was a bit of a shock. still acclimating. will try to get out another rough sketch of fairies...soon...i hope...

this is a drawing from wendling that i watercolored. i am purely interesting in painting techique.

some thoughts on Claire Wendling:

If you want to learn about drawing animals you go to the best sources.

Claire draws lots of detail--goes from the specific to the general. I'm not too gung ho on the way she simplifies her beautiful complicated drawings. I struggle with simplifying also. When i was at feature, it would blow me away the way the animators could really capture the essense of an emotion or action with a few lines. Most animators i worked with went from the general to the specific.

I will wager she is a leftie. Most of her animals point east. Most of my animals point west, I am a rightie. It is comfortable to draw this way, since that is the direction of the arc of my hand.

She is a thinker. She will draw the same subject over and over again at different angles, different directions, playing the "what if i drew it this way, game", not content with just one solution.

I have been drawing animals from her sketchbook over and over, not to copy her work but to internalize it. I study general surface anatomy--the next step will be a quick sculpt, to really gel those shapes in my head.

the colored lions are done in acrylic, real fast.

check out Tao's new blog!

more work on leoPardine. at the top right corner in color is a drawing made from the movie The new world with colin farrell and Q'orianka Kilcher. his costume, all the costumes, are fabulous and functional, and this scene towards the end of the movie, where the indian is walking in gardens of London, counting the white people, is gorgeous. so these leopardine sketches are inspired from that image. Later, i traveled to the Natural Museum of Science in La, where in the children's discovery room, there were a heap of real animals furs and among them--check this out! a real full bodied skin of a puma! I quickly put in on-the way LeoPardine would wear it--head on my cranium, paws on my shoulders and the feelings transformed me. This is what Leopardine would feel like--i was her in those few minutes. Next time i visit, i will get a picture since i did not have a camera! After i put the skin down, there was a family from Japan who eagerly rushed to put the skin on as i just had--a skin where as no one even knew it was there--and was taking photos of their kids in the skin! Others were lined up behind them! See what i started? hahahaha It just takes one idiot to get people going!

bottom right is a water color sketch of a native from the movie, also. top left column are drawings of my daughter in a pool next to me (in the water)

top:portrait of what LeoPardine could look like. done in acrylic a few months back, forgot to post. i really miss the real randomness and freedom of a real brush loaded with paint.