Lesson 4, Part 4

Ok, so I'm really dragging this lesson on and on!

I bragged in the last post about how my eye was so much more discerning. Well, the next night I spent nearly an hour on this character swiveling his head around. (I think it's a mouse?)

Once again, as soon as I felt like I was finally done, I got ready for bed, then came back and looked at it. It was terrible! I'd straightened it all out. Yuck!

So the next night I started over with a clean sheet of paper, resolved to really see what I was looking at. I drew lightly in blue for maybe fifteen minutes, and I could already tell I was making exactly the same mistakes. The body didn't seem to be leaning forward far enough, and the head seemed too small. But I could not figure out how to correct it, and I didn't want to spend a whole hour barking up the wrong tree again.

So I cheated.


I scanned the rough and compared it in Photoshop (above). Wow. The differences in the lower body were subtle but important. The curve in the hind leg that I was making too vertically straight made a huge difference in the overall perception of how the body was leaning.

I was also amazed that I had so much of the head exactly right, except the face was pushed in a whole eyeball width! How could I not see that?

So the next night, working from memory of the comparison, I went back to the drawing board and corrected the blue, then pencilled it in black.

Finally I compared it again. Except for the hands and nose tip being too small, it's not too bad.

Considering I cheated.

P.S. I really enjoyed the feeling that I was drawing three-dimensional volume in this character. Especially the organic shapes of the belly and the head.

P.S.S. Bonus comparison. Yikes!