GIANT MOUTH...post

My two favorite things to draw are mouths and legs, but for some reason I feel a little funny talking about them here! I can't tell if I'm giving away "secrets," or just stating the obvious! Anyhow, since people have asked for it and I'm always obsessing over them, here is the mouth post!

There are a few things I always look at first when drawing someone's mouth...does she have that little "lip bulb" on the top lip (I can't remember who coined that phrase, but it's a good one!), or is there just a little hole? Does the mouth point down or up when making a nuetral expression? Is the top lip bigger, or the bottom one?
(Also, I REALLY like overbites and underbites, and I'm not going to even get started on teeth here...)

All those things change how a person makes expressions, too. I've really been wanting to do some photo experiments- I want to take pictures of all my girlfriends making the same mouths shapes, and compare them all to one another. This would be great for animating lip synch, and just comparing the vastness of human shapes in general. Maybe I'll do a post about that later, and people can help me out with supplying pictures!

Here's a funny observation about mouth construction- you know when you're constructing a drawing, and you draw the center line, and you draw the eyes and nose and chin and whatever all lining up accordingly? The mouth doesn't fit on that line! It actually sticks out, like a weird human muzzle. I tried to draw it here, in sort of an exaggerated way:
My friend Robert Cory pointed this out to me a long time ago, but he used a much more vulgar way of describing this phenomenon. Maybe sometime he'll get a blog and describe it in his own terms for you!

Here's another one: in a three quarter view of a mouth, the part of the lips that are farther away from you are thicker. This is kind of hard to draw without making the face look like there are nasty worms on it. John K. is really good at it though. His bad catholic school girl drawings influenced me a whole lot. I tried to draw some here:
Well, I can't really think of much else to say! It's one thing to make observations and attempt to put it on paper, but then trying to describe it in words is even harder! So...here are some faces that I drew tonight while becoming completely fixated on drawing weird human orifices!
I know someone's going to call me "weird" for this!

Questions answered

Wow, I got a lot of questions on that last post about highschool. I don't know if anyone ever goes back to read the comments, so I'm just going to answer them here. I'll add some drawings too, so it doesn't get boring!)

Jennifer:
"With all the "big eyes" in your drawings, were you influenced by Margaret Keane?"

Yes, I like Margaret Keane, and a lot of the people who ripped off the style, too...I have a lot of cheesy paintings from the 60's that I get cheap from the swap meet. My favorites are the ones of "mod" kids dancing around. Those are really nice paintings! I'll post some of them sometime!

Jorge Garrido:
"How come you look so sad, though? Cheer up!"

Ha, I wasn't really sad, just weird looking. :)

Chet:
"So Katie,whats your relationship status? Im just currious(besides im too young to hit on you hahahahaha)"

My boyfriend's name is Luke and he's a cartoonist too. This is him:

Davis Chino:
"Funny how you note when a drawing is "from memory." Are you just trying to dodge recriminations from your subjects?"

Ha ha ha, maybe that's part of it...I also was hoping people would notice the difference between the ones done from photos and the ones done with no reference. Hopefully the ones with no reference are cartoonier! When you draw someone from memory, you use more of your instinct and draw things that you wouldn't draw if you were looking at the picture.

Mom:
"Does it embarrass you that your dad and I comment?"

No, I like it. :)

m.pheuz:
"may i ask what materials you use to colorize your (killer!) drawings? i mean, do you use brushes or some kind of pens or markers?"

I use a different array of markers. I don't have a whole set of any of the brands, just lots of random colors. Right now I really like this one kind...I don't know the brand name...they're super stinky though, and make you feel funny when you draw with them.

Arrive Magnificent:
"Hey, do you ever sell prints and stuff? When you do, you should let us know (for reals). More eBay auctions, maybe?"

I don't really know much about making and selling prints. Do you go to Kinko's and stuff to do that, or somewhere else? Maybe I'll look into it...I'll put up more ebay stuff soon, and I'll announce it here when I do!

Samuel K:
"Katie, what shapes do you generally use in your basic construction of characters? For drawing faces and open mouths and body structures and things?"

Wow, that's a hard question to answer with words! I guess I usually start with the standard Elmer fudd shaped head, with the cranium and jaw in two parts...then alter them to be more like whatever person I'm drawing. I guess I'll draw some and scan them in!

Here we go...sorry this isn't very good but I drew it fast:

I sort of wing it when drawing bodies...and when I draw mouths I usually think about the open part first, and then draw the lips around it. I like drawings mouths. Maybe I should do a mouth post sometime?

Anonymous:
"Huh......where are your highschool male counterparts?....I'm curious to see how adaptable your "design" techniques are... (much like the rest of your loyal fans)...Anyways, I figure it will be pretty easy, with all the boys today wearing girl jeans and growing there hair long and stuff...more and more boys can be funny and cute too...maybe even funnier and cuter...?"

What Male counterparts?? No one was interested in a bunch of nerds like us sitting around in home-made sailor scout costumes. Well, I guess there were a few. The truth is, I HATE drawing guys...it's so hard!! I do actually force myself to draw them at home, but I hate showing them because the drawings are so awkward. Girls are so much easier. I'll post some guys soon though. :(

Qui-Que:
"Are there any tips when creating a proffesional art portfolio for jobs nd' such you could show me?"

I suppose the best thing to do is have a lot of variety? Draw lots of different things and clean some of them up nice and pretty. Then send it to everyone you know! Maybe take a look at some professional artist portfolios online. That might give you some good ideas of what kinds of things to include.

Here's another picture of me and Megan:

One more thing- if you've emailed me or asked me to draw you a picture and I haven't gotten back to you, I'm really sorry! A combination of traffic from John's site and the mention on Blogger has brought me a lot of mail, and I can't keep up with of it. My brain's just not that smart! If I were good at that kind of thing, I'd probably be a lawyer or something.

By the way, everyone who played my "guess which girl is which" game got the answers right. Hooray!

Construction attempts

I've decided to post some ideas about construction today, even though it's a thing I fear and fight with all the time. It's so easy to draw something silly and energetic with no solid backbone, and just leave it at that. I'm usually very lazy and leave things unfinished that way. But it always makes me feel guilty, because I know with more effort and practice, that my funny or scribbly drawing could become a hundred times better and more believable if it had that hard earned skeleton of knowledge underneath.

I think the best combination for any sort of art is personality and skill. By personality I mean a certain energy or flair that comes from the artist themselves, and by skill I mean talents that need to be earned through work and study, like construction, perspective, etc. Of course, some people are born with a natural ability to learn those skills very quickly and easily. I'm not one of those people, however!

Learning construction has been extremely frustrating to me. Whenever I attempt to correct construction mistakes in my drawings, I'm always left with a hideously bland version of the original sketch. I often want to give up and just be satisfied with my wonky pictures, but one peek inside a Frazetta book or a Jim Smith sketch I have hanging up changes my mind again. I feel like I'd be so much more confident if I didn't have to struggle with construction problems and could draw with all that fierce energy. People who can combine all their strengths together like that to create such powerful art are total heroes to me.

So anyhow, I'm here to post some drawings that show my slow progress as I try to combine my natural drawing style with construction, which doesn't come naturally to me at all. I've always had a horrible time making both eyes on the same level, and making sure that the nose, lips, and chin all relate to each other. Usually I've got the mouth set too far inside the head instead of on a plane coming out from the nose, and the chin too far forward instead of underneath the mouth. In these recent drawings I'm posting here, I was trying really hard to consciously avoid those mistakes. The chins turned out a little better, but I still can't get the eyes to be right! By the way, I've flipped all these drawings so the mistakes can be spotted easier. A trick I learned from spying on Jim Smith himself!
I shouldn't complain too much, though. When I compare them to these sketches from a year ago, it seems like I've made at least a little progress. I know it's not much but it gives me a small thrill thinking that I might be a tiny step closer to where I want to be.
These drawings are pretty embarrassing, by the way. I'm sorry to say I couldn't tell how wonky they were until I flipped them over. And looking at them now I realize I have to worry about more than just eyes and chins...