It was a night to remember at our local theatre The red velvet curtains shimmied upwards to reveal a tiny figure clad in a grey mouse costume, skewered to the stage by the glare of the spotlight. The mouse's pink muzzle was a-tremble with terror and when a giant...
Do you love the magical power of the Un-Do button that comes with drawing digitally? The freedom, the sense of possibility and the multitudes of textures at your fingertips? You're not alone! In response to my post last week about the ongoing relevance (or not) of the...
'Fast and furious' hand-drawn cartooning process! I am a staunch believer that you can still get into the cartooning process the old-fashioned way — fast and furious pencil sketches followed by a nib and Indian ink and finally adding colour with watercolour paint or...
How to Draw Boots {For Cartooning} Yvonne sat with her pencil in hand frowning at the page. “Winter again,” she thought. “That means my cartoon character needs to wear boots. Ugh!” If, like Yvonne, the thought of drawing footwear makes your heart sink into your boots,...
Specifically, here are two drawing cartoon hands tips in the form of questions to help you troubleshoot your work and can get better, faster. The two questions to ask yourself when drawing cartoon hands are: what is in front? and/or what is the outline? Of course it...
Drawing Stroke Exercises — Simple Techniques for Better Outlining Have you ever brushed your teeth with the ‘wrong’ hand? If you haven’t, you should try it — assuming of course that you use a regular toothbrush rather than an electric one :). It’s much harder than...
Deep practice examples 'live' from Da Vinci What is deep practice? Deep practice is slowing yourself down and working on just one small element of something at a time. It’s an idea that I first read about in Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, and have adapted to...
Cartoon face drawing isn't rocket science but perhaps you (like Tammy down below) would like to know the principles behind drawing rounded, realistic, 3-D ones? Tammy thwacks her pencil down onto her notebook in frustration. Despite copious amounts of erasing and...
Knowing how to draw stick figure profiles is far more useful than simple "face-on" stick figures. However, it comes with a couple of challenges around perspective and foreshortening. Your face-on stick figure is symmetrical, and you can see 2 eyes and ears, 2 arms and...
Mindfulness exercises: do you know any fun, creative ones? With mindfulness all the rage and New Year resolutions making their annual appearance, why not find out how to use mindfulness to relax and re-energise in the next 5 minutes? I know, not everyone believes in...