Classing it up and Hitting the Books

I know we are in the middle of the Magnum pi series right now but I am having a little trouble with one of the guys so I am going to come back to that when I get him figured out. Right now I would like to fill you in on a few more study materials I am sifting through and tell you about my first art-related classroom experience since high school.

I just finished going through a book on inking by Gary Martin called fittingly enough The Art of Comic Book Inking. I didn't know much about inking but there is really a lot to it. I thought I could just bring my sketch into photoshop and use my pencil lines to color around but inking is very important. Inking adds the depth and crispness to your final product. It involves using brushes and quill pens so that you can vary the thickness of your lines, something you cannot do with a pencil. these varying line weights give your drawing the appearance of a third dimension. You may not think it makes a difference until you see a penciled piece next to an inked one but you can even see what I mean just by looking at the cover of Gary's book here. 


The other book I am reading right now is How to Draw Caricatures by Lenn Redman. It is a little older and his techniques aren't as refined as Tom Richmond's but he shares a lot of really good ideas on exaggeration and "seeing" the uniqueness of your subject. I am only halfway through it but I think I can already comfortably recommend it. It includes lots and lots of case studies showing a picture and then how he went about caricaturing it.



The other big news is that Xty and I are taking a life drawing course at Pasadena City College for the next 7 consecutive Saturdays. Yep, that's right... what better way to learn caricature than by drawing naked people. Actually I think it will help a quite a bit. This week our homework is to draw three version of our hand. The class is tomorrow morning so guess what we are doing today? Actually, I did two of mine yesterday so I only have one left. Xty spent a few hours and 3 sketchpads getting frustrated the other day but is now ready to knock them out. We are to draw one of our hand just sitting there, one of our hand holding something and one of our hand in the strange pose that our instructor picked. Here is one I did of my hand holding finger picks and picking the banjo.