The Living Dead

ZOMBIES!


New sketchy stuff from last night. My girlfriend and I met up with my very good friend Bobert Tappert (A.K.A. Rob Tari, who's blog I'll be linking to as soon as it's online) at a pub in Woodbridge called The Moose and Firkin. After a photo tour of Italy, Rob and I started drawing funny stuff on the back of a paper placemat.

The first two were done on opposite sides of the same page at the same time, and as such were upside-down; so they've been separated. First one is my side, the second Rob's.

The third image is from my recycled brown paper sketchbook (which is only two pages away from being full. Yay!).

After we did the portraits of each other (in the first two images) we were trying to think of something else to draw and so I suggested that we draw each other as zombies! Rob has far greater line confidence than I do, and is always better at getting an idea across on the page, so his drawing feels very "zombie-ish" whereas mine is rather stiff and lacking that real zombie quality.

We each spent probably less then 5 minutes on the zombie portraits though, so it's cool to look back and analyze how they (more accurately mine) could be fixed up.


My drawing of Rob (first image) is pretty cool, and was done really quickly. I like the solidity of it, even though I was going for a quick, almost caricature version of him. You can see what he look like in the last image above. Let me know if you think it looks like him :)


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Gonna talk about my buddy Rob for a bit.

Rob has a style of drawing all his own, which shines through in every drawing he does. The thing that I really enjoy about Rob's work is that he is never hesitant to put a line down, even if he's drawing something that he isn't familar with. It's a quality that I admire and need to work on in my own drawings.

Rob draws most things his way. If he draws two people next to each other he'll draw them in the same style that he usually draws people. It's the only thing that irks me about his drawings, and it's something that I've seen a lot of artists do.

Every artist draws differently, that's a given. But I choose to believe that the mark of a skilled artist is someone who can draw in many different styles. Each subject drawn is approached differently, individually, addressed based on the needs of that particular object and drawing.

It's something that I personally want to be able to do; to take my skills anywhere in the world, in any field of art, and always be free to make a living being creative.

The past two years I've spent at Seneca learning animation I've seen lots of people draw the same thing differently. I've seen exact representations of objects or people, totally life-like, but I can pick out the students who drew each drawing.

I think it's extremely valuable to try and push yourself artistically, and to comb all facets of art from our pre-historic ancestors, to the current-day retro 50's style revival. Each and every experience, each piece of new knowledge we gain, brings us closer to becoming the very best artists that we can become in our time on his rock.

And so to any all artists reading, why not try something new today? If you usually draw with straight lines, try using only curved ones instead. Stray from that comfortable path you've tread to this point.

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To back up all the hot air that I just released, I'm going to do exactly what I suggested others do and try a new technique for a week or so. Straight lines and hard angles here I come!


Hasta la vista!