Kyle
Baker’s How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning (112
7.5x10.5-inch pages, b/w with some color; paperback, $16.95) is more of an
illustrated lecture than the customary how-to book. The lecture is instructive,
amusing, often outright funny, but the illustrations, all Baker drawings culled
from various places, almost none done expressly for the book, don’t include very
many of the kind of art we’re accustomed to finding in such a book — drawings
intended to foster practice, for instance. His two pages of “stick figures,”
however, are classic: not so much sticks as gestures, and they sometimes have
volume and weight. This is the way experienced artists begin drawing: almost
none of them rely on the sort of rigid stick figure espoused in the classic
mail order Landon Cartoon Course. Baker also offers several pages of “stupid”
faces; good. His emphasis throughout the
lecture is on simplifying and exaggeration. About the former, his most telling
comments are these: “If your character is wearing a plaid shirt and you have to
draw that plaid ten thousand times, you’ll wish you’d dressed him in a nice
solid color instead. If you choose a plaid, that plaid had better be important
to the story. ... In other words, every element of your cartoon should
communicate. If it doesn’t aid communication, it’s a distraction and should be
removed.” Sound advice, and the book is full of it. It’s an excellent
illustrated lecture, more verbal than pictorial, but excellent withal. And
there are numerous Baker renditions of cute animals and babies.
Out so many subjects to draw you come to this stupid thing drawing it sounds funny but your article is very nice.
http://www.sketchheroes.com
Posted by: daisymae | May 19, 2011 at 03:02 AM