One of my favorite subjects to rant about is: “What I do badly” .
The list is endless, of course, but drawing “humans” is one of them.
I am often asked what my favorite subject is, to draw or sculpt. It isn’t what you would think, it is not fantasy, or animals, it is people. Us guys. People are endlessly fascinating to me because understanding what goes on in another person’s head is often as difficult for me to fathom as the mind of non-vertebrate species, yet I think that people are often broadcasting this information loud and clear as the average dog, if you can pick up on it.
I learn something new every time I draw from life
Yes, I know there are BIZILLIONS of artists, decades younger than me that can dash off a perfectly gorgeous human figure in any dynamic pose imaginable. This discouraged me when I was younger because I have NEVER been able to do that… so I spend my life trying, and trying and trying…
“Trying is the first step towards failure” is my favorite Homer Simpson quote, it is also the first step towards something worse; mediocrity. To avoid that, I draw people from life, non-idealized, in a way that shows the idea they are communicating with their body language. I want to learn to communicate this internal story of others in my drawings of people.This is the essence of good cartooning. My anatomy and proportions are not flawless and perfect, like that of artists that are really good at this; my goal is to record a unique image of a unique person in a non-idealized way, that communicates the bit of their lives they are unconsciously broadcasting at full volume to the world.
