How to Draw a Cartoon Lion---Part II the body

Here we are again, part II of my latest project. A book on how to draw cartoons; although the working title is sounding more like. 'How would you like to draw cartoons like this?'(with a very busy and intricate picture below).

At this stage I'm still looking for a look and layout for the book. So please do forgive me if the pages tend to chop and change in appearance.

Also this is a 'back-burner' project. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't consider this project worthy of my every waking second, but time, work and more pressing commissions have forced it into the relegation zone and afforded it its 'back-burner' status.

But seeing as this is a diary of my life as a cartoonist and writer, I will be letting you know about all this project and the many other I have on the go, both commissioned and private; like the New Comic Strip Submission series that I'm running. (part III to be posted on this Friday coming).

So with that explained and out of the way, let's move on into the horizon of a bright new future with the second section on How to Draw a Lion (to enlarge the picture, click on the image and open it, full size, in another pane). This one deals with the drawing of the Lion's body; having shown you all how to draw the head last week.

Have fun, have a go, and send me samples of what you get up to. (For those professional cartoonists amongst you, this is your turn to act all smug and pull out the 'been there, done that' T-Shirt).

Click on image to enlarge

Next Wednesday I'll be showing you the progress I'm making on a new Rugby poster design. I'm hoping to be showing you the background sketches and the process I now use to put these heavily involved pictures together and how my system has changed over the years.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this post. If you did then please share it like a demented sharing person and keep on coming back for more of the same, and a whole lot besides.

How to Draw a cartoon Lion---Part 1 the Head

Having checked on my Google statistics I see, that by a long way, you love it when I teach you stuff.

That's not to say you don't like the other things I do, like the silly stories, the diary, the work's in progress posts and the varied, wild and wacky assortment of other stuff I get up to.

But this here post has a two fold purpose. First off it's a tutorial on how to draw a cartoon lion's head. That, I'm sure you'll agree is more than self explanatory, especially with the big tutorial page below.

Second it's to announce that finally, and after many years of being cajoled and implored by friends, I am finally putting together a 'How to Draw Cartoons' book.

Now I know that there are many, many 'how to' books out there, but seeing as how you all like my tutorials so much, I'm going to do it: it's not like I'm not qualified. Hell, I've drawn for some seriously big markets, self published my own books and written thousands of scripts and gags over a twenty something year career. And that's the sort of knowledge I want to impart to the world.

Basically, I want to produce a book I wish was out there when I started drawing. Not just a how to draw cartoons--although there are a lot of those in this here book of mine---but a how to sell your work, who to approach and what publications can help you achieve your goals and ambitions.

Okay, without further preamble, here's the first page.

You'll probably think that this is a difficult place to start, but let me explain: Firstly, this wont be page one in my book. Page one, or section one, will deal with the human face and expressions. This page is stage two. The part that deals with transferring all you learned from stage one and putting it into an animal's face.

Also, I wanted to show you how simple something that initially looks damned complicated can be, so long as you use the shape system I use.

On a final, final point, next Wednesday I will be doing another tutorial on how to produce other expressions using the principles below.

So get out your pencils and have a go. And if you enjoy it, send me some copies. It would be great to see what you produced from what I've taught you.

Click  on the page to enlarge

This page is copyright 2016 Karl Dixon

I am hoping to link these tutorials with  YouTube videos of me actually drawing these exercises. I will keep you updated.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this post. If you did then please share it like a demented sharing person and keep on coming back for more of the same, and a whole lot besides.

Aston Villa: Cartoon Mascots

I've been producing the artwork for the Junior Villa Life (JV Life) for a few years--- I even used the characters, and an actual commission, to illustrate one of my tutorials on how I draw a comics page, all of which can be found on my cartoon tutorial page. The main characters are Hercules (the big muscular one), Bella (the leaping lady) and Chip (the techie, speedy one), are the anthropomorphisms of the clubs mascots.

Over the years I've produced a large body of work for JV Life--- some I have enjoyed creating more than others. And today  I would like to share just a few with you, along with my reasons for why they were such a pleasure to produce.

With this page it was simply the weather. I love drawing wind, rain and snow; in fact any extremes of weather. I particularly enjoyed the downward view in panel 7; it was just great when I got the slashing motion of the rain as it pummelled Hercules from above; I think it really added to the overall effect.

Students of the comics page and its colour balancing techniques may also like to know that when drawing murky days and gloomy settings, that darkening the shade of your characters natural colour will all add to the over-all look.

This is the second page from above and the action moves inside. With this page I still kept the dark colours on the main characters to darken the mood.

But seeing as this IS a children's comic, I had to lighten the mood.This came when designing the villain, Captain Splash. What I liked about this particular super Nemesis of the three Villa mascots was his umbrella head; it just made me smile and looked right. Villa though so to.

Normally I dislike producing caricatures in comics pages as it makes them clumsy and cumbersome; the people you caricature never have the same flow as the other cartoon characters on the page and can look a bit stiff.

But that said, my reason for including this page---despite the caricatures--- is simply panels 3 and 5. I just loved the whole shading look in panel 3 and the action in panel 5.

That's it really. Nuff said.

These two are here simply because I loved the action.

Both pages were amongst the very early cartoons I produced for Aston Villa, when the remit seemed to be action, more action and all out action. 

 love doing this, but sadly as they had new masters at the department that commissioned the magazine, they wanted to move away from the slapstick action style that seems to permeate through my style, and move into more story lead ideas.

It's been a while since I drew the last one and I hope there will be more. I think these characters have so much more to give and with the right direction could be so much more than they are at present.

Anyway, I love producing the work and hope that you have enjoyed the snippet trip down my memory lane.

All that is left to point out that all cartoons are the intellectual and actual property of Aston Villa FC, but the fun and love that went into producing them was all mine.

Cheers

PS: and as an aside, I've just noticed that the first ever post I produced for this blog was about these characters. Click here to view it.

It does seem strange that my blog is now five years old. I must write about that and maybe make a list of some of the highlights...maybe next week. Maybe...

How to Draw Action in Cartoons

Over the years it has been said by many people, including my peers, that my style is either European or that it show a fluidity of movement.

I will gladly admit to the European influence; I grew up devouring Asterix the Gaul and Lucky Luke, both of which were, and still are, giants of the Franco-Belgian Bande Dessinee movement.

I'd grown bored and uninspired by most of the home-grown material in the UK; it looked tired and lacked the pizazz of all that was coming over from Europe at the time. The colour, the pace, the well rounded characters, the great story telling and the action.

And it is this last noun that most people use to describe my work: The action, and it is this that I'm going to devote my latest post to.

Now I know that cartoons are supposed to abound with action, but the sad truth is that generally speaking they aren't. This can be put down to space restrictions--- in the case of the daily newspaper strip---or  a basic lack of the understanding of movement, which is sadly the usual case.

When I first started copying Uderzo (the artist on Asterix the Gaul), I was inadvertently infusing into my work a lot of action. I was, admittedly, unaware of what I was doing, but as luck would have it, my formative years in the field of learning the craft of cartooning was spent at the metaphorical feet of the worlds greatest exponent of fluid cartoon action.

So today I am going to pass a little of that knowledge on to anyone who's interested.

Below I've given you two approaches to the same situation. In the first I have emulated what I see so much of in comics or cartoon strips: the over use of action lines. Now I've nothing against action lines but too many pictures are filled with these confusing little buggers; the are, to me, the 'apostrophe argument' of the cartoon world.

Action lines should only be used to show extreme action. Action like a rocket coming at you from the horizon, or a cannonball as it courses through the sky; in other words: an image that needs to define great speed and not, as is the usual case, to show someone running to catch a bus or train. What I do in these situations--- and I've illustrated my point on the right hand picture--- is to use the angle of the shadow of the character to denote movement by setting it a little behind him; this gives the impression of forward motion. Also, another good trick is to show flecks of dirt in the characters wake; this, once again, gives the impression that he has kicked up dust from the pounding of his feet. It's exactly the same effect but a lot less cluttered and in a time where space is of a premium to commissioning editors, and cartoons are shrinking all the time, it helps the cartoon look cleaner and less confusing for the reader, and it helps it look fluid.

Think of an image of someone hitting a table and you will probably visualise a fist slamming down with zig-zaggidy marks around it to denote impact. That's fine, but if you think again and think about how the action impacts on everything around it you will realise that when the fist connects with the table---making all those zig-zag lines--- you could also visualise a cup and saucer, or a tea-pot or a plate of food spinning into the air with its contents rising above the plate, and have the table bending from the act of what's just happened to it. The character himself, how would he be looking? He's hitting the table. Is it an act of anger or violence? Show that action, show the anger, not only in his face but his body and posture. What direction was the blow coming from prior to the impact? Show it with lines, after all this is a furious speed moment.

The first illustration shows impact, the second one shows impact and action. There is, you see, a difference.

This is only a basic tutorial and I could go on forever about how movement works in a cartoon, and I will come back to this most important of tools in the cartoonists box of tricks from time to time. But if you take one simple thing away with you today it should be this: When drawing action think about how that action impacts on the world around it. If your characters running down the street think: what time of the year is it? If its Autumn (or fall), show leaves being kicked up. Is it a wet day? Show puddles being splashed and dampen your characters hair down; maybe furrow the brow---just like you would while caught out in the rain. If its snowing, have your character bounding through the deep snow; no one can run through snow, you leap and bound. Remember, think about the action and your picture will show life and form and have a natural fluidity to it.

Okay, onto my next point. Lets say you've been asked to draw a character doing a sequence of actions. For example: going down the stairs like a slinky. The writer may have said do this over five or six panels. Ignore them. You can do it in one and make it look terrific.

This idea wasn't invented by me but it is a vastly under used trick in the field of sequential cartoon art.

Below I've laid out just such a situation: In this idea I had the wheels of the skate board turn into springs to aid the skater boy to leap objects. But in classic comic fashion, it goes wrong and the skateboard and its newly acquired springs, turn our hapless little chap into a human slinky. Now rather than show this over a series of pictures---like the writer would have me do---I animated it. I simply thought about how the character would move, which steps he would land on and where he would end up. All that was left for me to do was insert a hanging mid air illustration and the action is complete.

(This picture was scanned in half completed so you can get a rare view of how much, or little, work goes into my layouts and finished pictures.)

I hope you've enjoyed this little tutorial. Keep coming back and I will do more.

Next week I'll be showing you how I draw the main characters from my very popular weekly story, Brabbles & Boggitt which I publish every Friday here at Diary of a Cartoonist and Writer. I've received quite a few emails about this story and its characters and I've been asked how I make them look consistent through out, and more than a few of you have requested that I do a post on how to draw Brabbles & Boggitt. So next week I'll do just that in another tutorial.

...And don't forget to come back on Friday for the latest page of comic tom-foolery from the Brabbles & Boggitt tale.

See you all then.

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends; mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites you use. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you

Another update

Just to let you know, I've posted a few more pieces of art to my Deviant Art page, but just in case you can't be bothered to go and visit it, I've made it easy and put them on the Portfolio page to.

Also as my 50th birthday rapidly approaches--- Jan 7th for all those who need to know---I still have plans to launch a new webcomic. Its not a definite, as my previous post will amply explain, but I've still not given up on the idea.

The probable reason why I want to pursue this project with such vigor is A: I've always wanted to produce my own comic strip as its been a dream of mine since about the age of seven and B: I'd like to mark my half centuary with something other than too much alcohol. And also for every birthday, from this point on, to be a double celebration.

The cartoon strip will be called 'Tales from 'Toonsville' (sample above) and is based largely on my observations on life. I will have regular characters that pop up from time to time; characters like: Granny Apple, the long suffering octogenarian, Bib, L'Enfant terrible, Damien, the archetypal child of Satan and bane of all those who come into contact with him and his ideas, Chairman Meow, the worlds unluckiest black cat, plus spoof send ups of all the latest movies, books, fads fashions and things old and ancient.

Brabbles

Boggitt

Also, as from this Friday 14th and every Friday afterwards, I will be running an entire graphic novel--- that I wrote and illustrated---  page by page, week by week. The story is from my Brabbles and Boggitt graphic novel. It's about two little misfits I created for the European market and sold  through my Dutch publisher--- primarily for children--- but which adults also enjoyed. 

The stories are set loosely around well known fairy tales but were given a modern day twist. For example, The little old lady who lived in a shoe who had so many children she didn't know what to do, became a big brother type story that had the subjects of the Land of Once Upon a Time voting the children out, one by one.

But this first tale is based loosely on Goldilocks and the three bears; more of which I will not say, I'll just let you enjoy. So come back Friday for the first installment; I'm looking forward to seeing you then!

Well that's that for now. Hope to see lots of you coming back and please, please, if you like what I do, tell your friends about it, post my articles on your Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon pages, plus any other sites you are a member of. 

The more people see what I do, the happier I will be and the happier I am, the more tutorials, crazy stories, free cartoons and oddball stuff I'll post here on my Diary of a cartoonist.

Cheers for now.

Colouring the Caricature

First off you're gonna get two posts this week..BLAM, BLAM! That's two; not one...TWO. One's going to be a tutorial and the other isn't.

The one that isn't is this one. Its not a tutorial but then it could be seen as a tutorial. It shows you how I did a caricature, or the process I went through to colour it.

It's not about how to do a caricature as to be honest, I don't know how I do it; To be absolutely and brutally honest, I just look at peoples' faces and think: Big nose, fat lips, big ears, weird hair, etc. But if you do glean anything from this piece then it will be---for you at least---a tutorial. If you can also understand any of the above drivel then please award yourself a beverage of your choice and sit back and enjoy the nice free pretty pictures from a blog post I called 'Colouring the Caricature'

Pretty uninspiring I know but it was 1:30 in the morning and I was very tired.

1.First thing your going to need is watercolours...lots of them (well it is a watercolour picture and if you were thinking of bringing oils, well quite frankly you're probably enough of  a worry to your family and shouldn't be allowed objects that you could poke yourself in the eye with)

I use Daler Rowney Gouache and water colour tubes and daylon brushes. The mixing dishes below are for the large background washes

 2. Now I add the rubber based masking fluid to the images. I do this as I still can't be trusted to paint around the lines. That and the fact that the next stage is to wet the whole page with a natural artist sponge (not to be confused with the one you use in the bath for your hands knees and private bits)

3. The reason why I dampen the paper is when I place the background layer---in this case blue--- it covers the page a lot more evenly and you can get some pretty terrific gradient effects...not that I used any here, but take my word for it, you can

4. When the background is well and truly dry, peel off the masking fluid.

From here I usually work on the face first as this is the obvious focal point to the picture. I start with a basic flesh tone and build up the layers; in this case I used Naples Yellow and darkened it with a bit of blue and red mix for a nice shade of wine.

*A good point. When producing shadows, most people just use a darker version of the colour they are using, but a top tip is this: Mix a nice wash of ultramarine blue and red to make a soft wine pigment and place this over any colour you care to name and it will automatically look like the natural shade of that colour. Its an amazing fact and the chameleon like qualities of these two colours never ceases to amaze me.

5. After working on the flesh I normally put a base washes down for all the colours I'm going to use. This gives me a good look and sense of how the colours are going to balance off against each other.

6. Having laid down the washes I begin to build up the layers. Always decide where the light is coming from at the very beginning of the painting and adhere to it with every colour you lay down.

7. Once all the shading is completed and the paint fully dry, I go around the outer edges of the character with a No.1 Brush. I do this because when I go in later with the much thinner dip pen, there will be a noticeable contrast in the lines and this gives the final picture a pleasing effect.

8. The point I made above should now be very evident, as I render the rest of the painting with my Gelliot 303 nib and Windsor and Newton Black India Ink.

9. I then sign it, remove the masking tape and the caricature is now completed.

Hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look into my working methods. If you did, come back for more, and don't forget tomorrows video tutorial on how to draw a cartoon vulture.

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends, mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you

Karl

This Little 'Piggy' went to YouTube

I haven't produced a cartoon tutorial for quite some time, so I thought today, with the weekend looming and pencils easier to find, it could be a good time to give you another 'How to' video.

And because I realise that not everyone who visits my blog is a proffessional cartoonist, I'm going to start a series of tutorials--- available on my YouTube page as well--- where you can regularly go and catch up, or sit back and be entertained; whichever takes your fancy.

I do have a whole load of other tutorials up there, but due to some weird YouTubian glitch, when I last went to sign in, it forced me to open up a new account and start all over again. But if you wish to see my other tutorials, either go to my tutorials tab which is up above this post or just click here and go view the page that I can no longer access.




This particular tutorial is aimed at those of you out there who just want to learn a neat trick on how to produce a nice looking cartoon while using only simple shapes. There's also a tutorial on how to draw a cartoon elephant using the same simple shape technique on there.

So have fun and send me in your samples, it's always good to see your work.

Cheers

Karl

By the way, if you are in need of books, DVD's, games, electrical goods and you're going to use Amazon to buy them, please click onto it through my site on the banner advert to your right; for every person that does I get a payment from Amazon, and if you order from that click then I get a commission on what you buy. It doesn't cost you a single penny extra but it does help fund this blog, enabling me to carry on giving you free cartoon advice and stories.

Please remember, every click you make helps me entertain you! Thank you

Colouring an editorial cartoon in Photoshop

If we go way back, and by way back I mean waaaaaay back, some of the more persistent members of my little coterie will remember that I published a post called how to draw an editorial cartoon and I seem to remember making some vague threat that I'd be posting another tutorial---probably the next week if I'm true to form---about how I colour it using Photoshop.

Well, the good news is, boys and girls, that week has finally arrived; I have completed it and here it is. Well, to be honest with you, I completed it a while ago; on the day I drew the cartoon to be absolutely accurate; but its taken me until now to find it---due to the fact that there's an awful lot of work on my hard drive and I can never remember what I name these damned things and so generally loose them to the ether within seconds of saving them. So in the grand tradition of all things of this nature, I found it yesterday while looking for something completely different...which, for the record, I didn't find.

Anyhoo, that's enough about me and my lackadaisical attitude to tidiness and tardiness. Lets get onto it shall we; lets get onto the second post, the one in which I show you my process in colouring an editorial cartoon in Photoshop.

1: First off I scan the cartoon into Photoshop, selecting Black and white and 300 dpi as its resolution. Once I've  previewed it I use the marque tool (the bounding box of broken lines that surrounds it), then I click scan.

2: Once the cartoon appears, I select the eraser tool (see highlighted) and start removing all the black dots and imperfections; making very sure that I don't rub out anything important to the finished cartoon.

3: Once the cartoon has been cleaned up its time to create layers. So first off I go to images+mode+greyscale. Then go through the same process again images+mode but this time select CMYK. (if the cartoon is purely for the net you can chose RGB---more about that later). 


Once you've completed that click on the 'new layer' tab (highlighted) and in the box that says 'Normal' change it to Multiply.

4: Next choose the'pencil' tool, select '1' as the ratio, and connect the broken lines. I do this because when I apply the 'paint bucket' tool, and if there are any gaps, the colour will flood out all over your mini masterpiece.

6: Now start filling in the picture with colours of your choice.

If you only want solid colours then your picture will soon be complete, but if, like me, you like to give your images a little more substance, then in the next part we see how I personally build up the colour layers with just a mouse and no tablet

7: First off select the colour you want to shade. In this case I chose the flesh tint. Once you've clicked on it with the 'magic wand tool' then un-tick the 'contiguous' box on the bar above. This will ensure that Photoshop now only recognises the areas that have flesh colour in it (or what ever colour you chose); in other words, if you accidentally went over the edge of the flesh area, the pen or air-brush tool wouldn't make a mess of any neighbouring colours.

7: If you don't want the dotted lines running around the perimeters of your selected colour, select Ctrl+H and they will stay hidden.

Now chose which direction the light is coming from and with the 'Pencil Tool' define the delineation  lines. Once that's done to all the areas of the colour you've selected, hit the shaded side of the lines with the 'Paint-Bucket' tool.

Once completed you must press Ctrl+D to make sure the 'Magic-Wand' tool has been deselected before moving onto your next colour.
Follow this process on until your cartoon is complete.

8: And that is pretty much it. The cartoon has been coloured, save it as a JPeg for the newspapers or what ever format is required, and name it. (that's when things normally go pear shaped and I lose the whole file)

On another note. If you wish to put your work up on the net and you upload it in CMYK, all the colours will look garish and horrible. So to avoid this happening you will have to re-save it as an RGB. That way when you put your masterpiece up on your Facebook or Twitter or any other social media site you have, it will look to others the way you intended it to look.

To make this happen, simply retrieve your CMYK cartoon from your documents then go to: Image+Mode+RGB---once this is done  re-save the cartoon. I normally do it by simply adding 'RGB' to the end of whatever it was originally called. And that's it. Your cartoon is now saved for print and the web.

Phew, well there you have it; how I paint a cartoon in Photoshop. If I have the time, the inclination or I can be bothered, I'll be doing a few more of these to show you how more complicated work is rendered.

Until then; happy double clicking and I'll see you all soon.

Cheers

Karl

By the way, if you are in need of books, DVD's, games, electrical goods and you're going to use Amazon to buy them, please click onto it through my site on the banner advert to your right; for every person that does I get a payment from Amazon, and if you order from that click then I get a commission on what you buy. It doesn't cost you a single penny extra but it does help fund this blog, enabling me to carry on giving you free cartoon advice and stories.

Please remember, every click you make helps me entertain you! Thank you