Animal Drawring at the Zoo

Just got back from the last day of David Colman’s Weekend Animal Drawing Workshop.  Today was the more difficult portion of the workshop as we drew the animals at the zoo.  It’s been a long while since I’ve drawn at the zoo and it shows.  Something I definitely need to do more of nonetheless.  Luckily, I have my saturdays to work on that at the zoo and the tar-pits.

For those of you that weren’t able to attend the workshop, good news for you: David recorded his demos and will upload them on the internet.  That’s only a small part of the workshop, the one on one critiques from David are more beneficial than a demo because it’s personally tailored to your current artistic ability.  I was fortunate enough to take his Animal Character Design class and those personal crits helped my drawing improve a great deal.

It’s still a learning process and this weekend just gave me more motivation to focus in on my animal drawing.  Maybe I’ll see you guys at the zoo or the tar-pits on a saturday.

Cheers!

Link Em

David Colman

Digging through old sketchbooks

Decided to post up my first drawings from when I took David’s Animal Character Design Class over a year ago.  It almost seems like I kinda know what I’m doing now.  haha.

Anyways, I remember people looking at my sketchbook when I first started drawing at the zoo and they would say how  this drawing was cool and how that gesture was great.  I had to correct them and be like “David Colman did it.”  That’s why I have little captions on the cool drawings/gestures.

I just wanted to post these to show that we all have to start somewhere on our road to becoming a good artist.  I’m not sure how close I am to being a fairly competent artist, but I packed enough snacks for a long road trip.  Now lets get drawing!

Bones: not the show, the ones at the La Brea Tarpits!

Day 1 of David Colman’s Animal Drawing Workshop: Paige Museum at the La Brea Tarpits

First time drawing animal skeletons and it was a lot more fun than I expected.  I think it’s because of the fact that I’m drawing something new and also that it’s my first time at the La Brea Tarpits.  I don’t think any of my classes in grade school ever took a field trip there so it was long overdue.

Good times drawing and for those that missed out on the workshop: Dave’s gonna post video of his demo on the web sometime soon.

Anatomy is something that’s been lacking in my drawings, since I’m not familiar with the muscles and structure of animals and people.  Skeletons are great ways to learn form because 1) they stay still and 2) they stay still.  It’s less frustrating when you can move up close and around to get an idea of what you’re looking at when drawing.  Very convenient when studying.

It’s all part of the learning process and something I plan on putting more of an effort in understanding.  It’ll be a nice place to alternate with the zoo when I start using my saturday mornings to hone my animal drawing skills.

Anyways, tomorrow is the real test since we’ll be drawing animals at the zoo.  It’s been a while since I’ve drawn at the zoo so it’ll be interesting at best.

Cheers!

Link Em

David Colman

weekend sketch

Decided to spend my weekend sketching and trying to design characters from life, albeit that it was homework for David Colman’s character design class at the Concept Design Academy but it was a skill I wanted to build up as a designer. I was at a coffee shop on friday and the zoo on saturday: got a bit of drawing done but not the results that I wanted. To be able to design characters from quick observation is super hard and I found myself trying to capture a likeness more than anything else. It’s challenging, but I think it’ll pay off in the long run. Anyways, enjoy the rest of the weekend. cheers.

gerenuks at the zoo

I haven’t been to the zoo in over a month and an animal drawing session was long overdue.  I actually bumped into one of my old classmates, Alex Alvarado.  If you wanted to improve your life drawing, I’d suggest taking his intro to figure drawing class at LAAFA because he’s an awesome draftsman.  Anyways, we talked character design and animation while drawing Gerenuks.  Considering the time off from drawing animals, my results weren’t too bad.  All in all, it was a pretty cool day.  It’s great to just take a break and just draw for leisure considering I’m swamped with school during the week.  Hopefully, the zoo trips will be more frequent now that the term is going to end in a few weeks.

link em:
The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art