Girls are retards...in a good way

I love to try and capture that side of girls that is totally mindless and silly. I like trying to make them seem unaware that they look dopey, too. Maybe it doesn't sound like it, but I really mean "mindless" in a good way. Since I'm a girl, that retarded, doofy side of female behavior is more appealing to me than the sexy, mysterious side that translates so well into drawings.

Here are some drawings out of a Delia's catalogue, a great reference for goofy cute girls!
Even girls in Playboys can be retarded! Another great reference: vintage Playboys.
I also like to imagine that most the girls I draw are about as complex as hamsters... friendly, oblivious, without worries besides the desire for a handful of seeds or a bed made out of tissue. I think I would get along with the girls I draw!
And here's one of my favorite subjects! Guess who!
Hip hip hooray, for retarded-cute!

Some more famous faces

I hope some of you guys will be up for another round of "Guess the Head." I also hope that if there are people out there reading this who have experience doing caricatures, that you'll enlighten me with some theories or maybe other cool caricature artists to check out. As they are right now, I feel like these drawings are more "warpy portraits" than actual caricatures. It's hard enough getting a likeness without concentrating on how to make it cartoony or funny. I suppose the perfect caricature would be a good drawing with an extremely good likeness that is also entertaining to look at. But for now I'm mostly just trying to get it so you can guess who the person is supposed to be.
By the way, some of these turned out meaner than I had meant them to be! I was going for "doofy" or "silly looking" with some of these, but they just came out sort of...vulgar.

A very special day

I'm calling today special because I'm finally posting a drawing of a man! I can probably count the number of men I've drawn in the past year on my fingers. I'm saving today's man for last on this post because he's so handsome.

Anyhow, I'm posting these caricatures in hopes that some of you guys may be able to guess who they are. It's kind of intimidating to do. Once you start caricaturing famous people, it becomes really obvious whether or not you're on the right track. I usually just draw random girls from magazines, so obviously no one will know if they look like the real girl or not. So, here goes!

I already know no one will be able to guess this one!

I'm pretty sure this one is really off, too...

Something funny

After I posted those great John caricatures, I decided not to post any of my own celebrity drawings for a while...so I was looking through recent drawings to see if there was anything interesting to post and I came upon some of these little sketches. I found two pages of girl drawings that I drew while I was at work, and underneath them I found some drawings I had done from the same reference magazine from the previous night. Here are the first ones.
While those aren't especially interesting, I thought they were funny to look at in comparison to these other ones, which were drawn using the same magazine for reference, but with the aid of about 3 or 4 beers and the company of two other drunk cartoonist friends. I'm curious to know whether people like this looser, wonkier stuff better or not!
Who's up for another drunken cartoonfest?? Fred? Cory? Chad?

More profiles

I guess I ought to start off this post by saying that the pictures I've posted on this blog are all horrible examples of what I'm ultimately trying to do with my drawings. It's not my intention at all to draw semi-realistic girls all the time, but I still think my more cartoony stuff is too bland and lacking in design. Hopefully I'll turn out to be right in assuming that drawing real girl faces will get me where I want to be.
So anyhow, here are some new profiles, this time drawn without reference. Like I said before, it's been really difficult to break away from the conventional cute girl profile that I've been drawing for years, but when I try practicing more specific faces from reference, they come out without much cartooniness. These came out pretty cartoony, but they don't look like specific people, which bugs me.
I kind of like how these two turned out, even though they're just floating heads on white paper.



















I hope someday I'll be able to combine cartooniness with the specificness of a real girl's face without having to rely on happy accidents. I'm discouraged that most my drawings that I like are a result of being distracted or making a drunken mistake with the pen.

Construction attempts

I've decided to post some ideas about construction today, even though it's a thing I fear and fight with all the time. It's so easy to draw something silly and energetic with no solid backbone, and just leave it at that. I'm usually very lazy and leave things unfinished that way. But it always makes me feel guilty, because I know with more effort and practice, that my funny or scribbly drawing could become a hundred times better and more believable if it had that hard earned skeleton of knowledge underneath.

I think the best combination for any sort of art is personality and skill. By personality I mean a certain energy or flair that comes from the artist themselves, and by skill I mean talents that need to be earned through work and study, like construction, perspective, etc. Of course, some people are born with a natural ability to learn those skills very quickly and easily. I'm not one of those people, however!

Learning construction has been extremely frustrating to me. Whenever I attempt to correct construction mistakes in my drawings, I'm always left with a hideously bland version of the original sketch. I often want to give up and just be satisfied with my wonky pictures, but one peek inside a Frazetta book or a Jim Smith sketch I have hanging up changes my mind again. I feel like I'd be so much more confident if I didn't have to struggle with construction problems and could draw with all that fierce energy. People who can combine all their strengths together like that to create such powerful art are total heroes to me.

So anyhow, I'm here to post some drawings that show my slow progress as I try to combine my natural drawing style with construction, which doesn't come naturally to me at all. I've always had a horrible time making both eyes on the same level, and making sure that the nose, lips, and chin all relate to each other. Usually I've got the mouth set too far inside the head instead of on a plane coming out from the nose, and the chin too far forward instead of underneath the mouth. In these recent drawings I'm posting here, I was trying really hard to consciously avoid those mistakes. The chins turned out a little better, but I still can't get the eyes to be right! By the way, I've flipped all these drawings so the mistakes can be spotted easier. A trick I learned from spying on Jim Smith himself!
I shouldn't complain too much, though. When I compare them to these sketches from a year ago, it seems like I've made at least a little progress. I know it's not much but it gives me a small thrill thinking that I might be a tiny step closer to where I want to be.
These drawings are pretty embarrassing, by the way. I'm sorry to say I couldn't tell how wonky they were until I flipped them over. And looking at them now I realize I have to worry about more than just eyes and chins...

My own head

Today at work, my buddies Luke and Fred and I got into a conversation about caricaturing and we all got inspired to draw some funny pictures! We all ran and hid in our cubicles to draw, and I came up with these silly attempts at a self-portrait. It's really hard to draw yourself! I think almost everyone has a tough time with it.
Then we came up with a wonderful new game...first one of us would draw a caricature, then the next person would redraw it and attempt to make it funnier and more like the actual person. Then they'd pass it off again...in theory, this is a GREAT way to draw! Just keep drawing the same thing over and over until you get it right. Usually when I try this by myself though, the drawing comes out more bland with each new try. I suppose the easy thing to do would just have Fred redraw all my drawings for me and fix them, ha! But I guess I ought to learn how to fix my own drawings by myself.
Anyhow, I did a funny drawing of Fred (see my link, Cartoons and Caricatures!), and he did a funny drawing of me. Here it is, the start of our new caricature game!
So when I was done laughing at this picture, I took it and drew it over again and made some changes...like making my nose a little more snubby...and here's what happened:
So then Fred took that one back, and did one more, which ended up being the funniest drawing and probably the most like me.
We also did the same thing with a retarded caricature I did of Fred...maybe he'll post the chain of Fred's in his blog sometime (hint, hint)!
Well, that's really it for the day. I didn't learn anything new about drawing today during my experiments, except that it's smart to befriend other artists who can make your drawings look better. Thanks Fred!! Everyone write down today's lesson!
Here's one last set of drawings for today-a picture of me and my favorite person, Luke!