Thumper Sketch

      Just a quick sketch of one of my fave Disney character -- Thumper, the inspiration behind the design of my animated blue bunny icon.  I had fun animating this character for Bambi 2, way back when I was working at Disney Australia. It's been awhile since I drew this character, but because someone actually requested me for this sketch recently, and so I took the chance to revisit this character and did this sketch. 

 

Head Drawing - Marlon Brando

     Today's head drawing is the young Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He was not only very gorgeous in this film but his acting style was revolutionary at that time.  Drawing his likeness took me some time and was a bit tricky, because it can easily looked like a generic handsome face.   But it was fun just the same. 

Head Drawing - Al Pacino

   Today's head drawing is the young Al Pacino in his role as Michael Corleone, from the film classic The Godfather. 

Head Drawing - Michelle Pfeiffer

     Continuing with the head drawing practice using some drawing methods I've learned from the just concluded class, here's a drawing of Michelle Pfeiffer as Madame de Tourvel from the film Dangerous Liaisons. 

Head Drawing - Jeff Bridges

        This is my week 5 and final head drawing assignment. Rendering was the topic. It was about design and edges. I still have a long way to go in terms of polishing my rendering, but in the span of 5 weeks, I think I made quite a progress.  I enjoyed doing theses assignments that I will be continuing doing these head drawings for days to come. Till the next one....

Head Drawing - Stan Lee (28Dec1922 - 12Nov.2018) R.I.P.

       Today, I learned of Stan Lee's passing at the ripe old age of 95 years.     I wasn't a Marvel comic reader. I was more of a Dennis the Menace, Snoopy, Garfield comics reader. Even if I'm not much of a comic book reader these days, nevertheless, some of the best movies and series I've enjoyed for the past decade or so, had been the Marvel superheroes like the Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman, and the Daredevil. They were all based on comicbook characters created by Stan Lee.

       When I was still starting out to become an animator many years ago, I was terrible with drawing humans.  In fact, I was terrible in drawing from imagination, a crucial skill an animator needs to be able to animate different characters effectively.  One of the books that helped me draw people from imagination was the book, How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.  Even if the book was tailored for comicbook artists, the fundamental lessons were very much applicable to a budding animator like me at that time. 

         And so, in a small way, I'd like to pay tribute to Stan Lee, with this drawing.  May he rest in peace.

 

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman (Updated)

      It's really important to have a good solid construction and correct proportion as the foundation, but that doesn't mean there won't be no changes along the way. This happened with this drawing. Shadow shapes were further refined and adjusted. The neck and shoulder proportions were also broadened.  But once the basic structure and the general shapes were laid-in, adding the details of eyes and mouth were like icing on the cake. 

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis (Updated)

     This week is the final week and the focus is rendering. Since I've done so many heads in the past 4 weeks, and most of  them are in different stages of completion, I decided to go back and finalized some of them. 

     Here's the updated version of my drawing of Bruce Willis, finally with eyes and mouth.

Head Drawing - Emily Blunt

    This drawing was also part of the week 4 assignment I submitted for the Head Drawing Class I'm taking.  Just like in my Hugh Jackman drawing, I'm showing here the drawing stages that I've learned from the class so far.

  

 head drawing stages

       It starts with the lay-in of the generic head from week 1. Then the Reilly method rhythm lines from this week's lesson were drawn on top of it. Those lines also served as planar and anatomical guides as well.  After that, the features and shadow shapes were added.  Followed by the adding of  dark tones on the shadow shapes. This stage was where most of my time was spent. Likeness was recognizable already at this point. After this stage, adding some light gradations was easier to figure out. The rest of the rendering was finished in a short time after that.

    

A closer look

        Next week would be the final week of the class and it would be about facial features and rendering. Watch out for my assignment postings of those here.

Head Drawing - Hugh Jackman

        So for the past few weeks, I had been taking a class that gradually introduced me to the Reilly Head method.  Having drawn a few head assignments where I learned to separate the shadow shapes from the light shapes, it's now much easier for me to grasp  the concept of the Reilly Head .  Those multiple lines, which can be confusing, represents the head planes, anatomical structure and rhythm lines.  Those lines really help in rendering the form.

    After learning the Reilly Head, those rhythm lines seem very obvious  whenever I look at faces now.

Head Drawing - Alan Rickman

        *** There's an updated version of this, see here.***

         After Bruce Willis, it's Alan Rickman in his  memorable role as Hans Gruber from the film Die Hard.  He's got a nice shadow shapes in this photo, that drawing his likeness became easier to capture. Although I wasn't quite sure when I first started with the basic head construction.  I skipped the outlining of some of the features and just went straight to sculpting with tones. It took me awhile but eventually I did manage to get his likeness.   I kept the values limited to three, with some hint of whites in some of the hotspots. Plus a light grey background to frame him nicely. Cool, huh?

Head Drawing - Bruce Willis

 ***There's an updated version of this, see here.***

    This was one of the head drawings for my week 3 assignment in the Head Drawing class I'm taking, rendered with 3 to 5 values only.  Still not concerned with the eyes and mouth, it's amazing how effective this method is in drawing the likeness based on the dark patterns of the head.

      I used the basic generic head construction I learned from week 1, and then  modified it according to Bruce Willis' head shape and proportion. Followed by the mapping of the dark shadow shapes, avoiding the eyes and mouth for now, using only three values, the paper's value for the light, mid-tone grey and the darkest dark.   To add some polish, some whites are added for the hotspots, and black background to frame the whole head.

Head Drawing No. 5 - Can You Tell Who This Is?

This is now my 5th head sketch, where I draw the likeness through shapes. Even without the eyes and nose, this face is easily recognizable.  This head drawing method made my previous portrait drawing using the grid system seem obsolete.   This method is all freehand, a more enjoyable method for me.