Cartoon outlining skills — we all need them, daily! And Procreate is always bringing out new pens, pencils, brushes and other tools... Or are they? To be honest on any given day, I couldn't tell you. That's because I'm a creature of habit (so I stick to my favourites...
Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh traced? Yep, he developed one of his super-famous works — The Courtesan — after being intrigued by the image of a Japanese woman in a fashion magazine (above right) and tracing it to get the essentials firmly in his mind. So if...
Cartoon ideas are literally everywhere...... and here I have the receipts to prove it 🤓. Do you see the shadowy shape of "Speedy" emerging from the photograph up above? That odd pattern of rough paint-on-brick-wall prickles my imagination to murmur the word...
How to cartoonify - this is a question that I get asked regularly, and this excellent photo someone was working with lends itself perfectly to a cartoonifying exercise for a beginner. So, where do you begin to learn how to cartoonify someone or something? If you have...
Different cartooning styles... and developing your own. Hmm, I get so many questions about this, so here's a quick insight via a recent Q & A... Q: "Sometimes I hear about different cartooning styles. I know of manga, but there must be more different styles. For...
When I was a child my Mum used to watch a TV program called “Cooking with Wootty”. Wootty was a slim, nondescript fellow with big horn-rimmed glasses and a haircut like a Beatle. The ‘everyman’ of the 1970’s, I reckon! Mum owned a slew of recipe books — as well as...
In Cape Town we have super-changeable weather conditions. A week or two back, it was misty and raining at my doorstep, but just 11km away — my destination for the morning — it was a peach of a day on the beach! Needless to say, familiarity with local weather patterns...
They weren’t much into cartoon expressions, but have you ever wondered what the Grand Masters used as references, back before cameras and fashion magazines where a thing? I suspect they did quick sketches wherever they went, which honed their drawing skills at the...
In practical terms, the first step in learning to cartoon is learning to see. And by learning to see, I mean that you figure out how to recognise the individual components that make up a cartoon character. To be clear, I’m not talking about any sort of rote drawing...
Learning how to draw a minion may seem a bit specific. In fact, you may have precisely zero interest in learning how to draw a minion AT ALL, but bear with me. It won't be more than a minute or two before you see how you can use this (or any familiar cartoon...