Cartoons

I am a fine artist and comic book colorist primarily, but occasionally I need some recreation and sometimes when I do I turn to cartoons. They are a great way to practice the fundamentals of art that are camouflaged in the finer expressions. Some of those fundamentals and fundamental skills include line, line weight, edge, pencil work, inking with brush and pen, character, colour, expression, and story, among others. If you do a simple search of your favorite characters on any image searching engine you can find lots of examples of great art you can copy or modify so have some fun and practice cartooning occasionally like I do. It’s serious business. Remember… ALWAYS imitate the masters and make copies of their works to learn their techniques!!! After you’ve learned how it was done do it again and make some aspect of your copy original. If you copy the lines change the color. If you copy the line weight add shading. If you copy the color modify the pose. If you copy the pose change the expression. For Taz I made sure I digitally colored him for practice, the copy of pooh helped me practice inking big shapes, the two Jokers were original work and helped me practice my expressions and overall creativity. I was able to splash some watercolour on the second one. Donald taught me about duck bills $$$ and since I used a marker on that one I was able to do it fast enough that I decided to add digital colour once I scanned it in, and the last picture is a study I did. The poses there aren’t original, but I used a brush and ink almost entirely freehand to get some extra practice at making thin lines and then I switched the focus of the study to mixing some colours from a limited watercolour palette I had at my desk from Winsor and Newton hoping to match the colours from the series. Taking good notes like this will save you a lot of frustration.

embstazout embspooh
embssillyjoker1 embscolorjoker

embsdonaldduck1embsbatmancolors1