MORE Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek!

10 more Star Trek gals, again on post-its, drawn while eating or at 2 am, right before bed. These aren't as cool as the first ones, but who cares! Everyone could use some extra Star Trek in their lives in these troubled times (I'm tired).

First, have some green:

OOPS cross-eye alert

This lady was prettier than my drawing

This Vulcan girl is so pretty. I messed her up bigtime. She's not good enough for Spock anyhow!

This girl kind of looks like Chekov.

I like this one.

Ok that's it! Time for sleep!! Coming soon, "Miss Pas Touche" fan art, or Moongirl drawings, I'm not sure. If you liked these, check out the previous post, there are better Trek gals below.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Unused trollop designs

Last year I was asked to design some burlesque/stripper types for a secret project that I can't tell you about...obviously I can't post the actual designs I eventually did, but when I heard about the project I rushed to get some practice ideas out, and these are some of them!
Obviously these aren't the most sophisticated drawings in the world, but I like them because they're loose and loopy. I felt really inspired by the project I was going to be designing for, but as it hadn't started yet, and I wasn't given the details for the characters, there was no pressure. That kind of situation usually results in drawings I'm actually ok with!
I had no idea at that point what kind of designs I was going to be asked for, so it was fun to come up with different ways the characters might look.
In the drawing above I was trying to simplify different girl shapes.

I like these two color ones best. I'm gonna do that weird fly-away hair thing more often! :)

Freeway *UPDATE!* Art show alert!

*Update!!*
I'm gonna be in the Fruits Go Go art show, along with Gabe Swarr, Sandra Equihua, and lots of other cool artists! It's at the Monkeyhouse Gallery in Silverlake. Click here for details!


This is an older drawing that I posted on here a while back, only it's huge now. I inked and colored it on this funny crinkly old paper that did really cool things to the marker ink. Also the design on her skirt is sewn on with embroidery thread. I wanted to do more with string but ran out of time!


Here's how big it is, although now that it's in a huge frame it looks even bigger! I'm not sure I'll be at the gallery opening on Saturday, but I might be. I hope some of you LA based bloggers will stop by and take a look at all the cool art!


OK! Enough about that.
My friend Ricky (my friend who does 1930 Nitemare Theatre on Dumm Comics) loaned me an awesome movie! It's called Freeway, and aside from just liking the movie, I also got really inspired to draw the main character.


The movie stars Reese Witherspoon...it's one of her earliest roles I think, as she looks super young. These drawings are not very good caricatures of Reese...instead I just kind of wanted to have fun trying to draw a simplified version of her character in the movie.


These first ones are pretty feeble. You can tell which drawings I liked though because I colored them!


Reese is really great in this movie. She plays a screwed up teenage girl in a modern "Little Red Riding Hood" story. She's angsty but goofy, and really likable. She makes great expressions too! Kiefer Sutherland plays the big bad wolf.


You know, Reese always gets crap for her prominent chin, but her chin wasn't the most interesting feature on her face for me. She's got this great big round cranium, flared, downward pointing nostrils, and a really cool mouth that I can't actually draw. Really very cute. I cheated on drawing her lips in these drawings. When I tried to draw them like real lips, they didn't look like hers. Now I have a new way of drawing mouths! Hooray! I couldn't figure out her eyes, though. They're kind of different in every drawing.


Her expressions are great! She makes a hundred expressions per monologue. If you want practice drawing real girl expressions, go rent this movie! And get "But I'm a Cheerleader" too!


I drew all these while watching the movie, but the bloody one was just made up.


Ok, that's it for now! Now it's time for more important business!! After years of begging my boyfriend, he finally caved and let me adopt a kitten! I won't talk too much about him now (there's already enough to read here), but you can expect a huge kitten post soon!

This is what Little Ricky has to say to you!


Remember to try and always adopt pets from shelters if you can! Lots of animals need loving homes! And be nice to your animals, or I'll kick your ass!

The term "generic"

So on my last post, Trevor left a comment asking:

"What qualifies those girls in "Altruists" as 'super generic'?"

I planned on making a just a quick explanation as an extra on some bigger post with more drawings, but totally got caught up with the question and came up with a lot of ideas about "generic" drawings (specifically of girls). Here are the drawings he was asking about:


And here are some designs I did that I am much less embarrassed to show:


Also, I tried to explain more on my outlook of the word "generic" in some little drawings, which I'll post below (its more fun this way).


Now here is some less fun stuff...more theories on (dun dun DUNNN!!!)...

GENERIC!!!!!!!!

Disclaimer: these are rambling thoughts written quite late at night.

1. What makes a drawing "generic"? There are two different ways to look at the word generic but I'll talk about that later. When cartoonists talk about a generic girl design, I believe it usually refers to the "cute" equation. A generic girl design generally has a big cranium, large eyes, a small upturned nose, and youthful feminine lips. Her face is rounded and nothing is too prominent. Disney princesses are pretty generic (don't get mad at me yet, I am a HUGE fan of Disney movies and can watch 'Sleeping Beauty' 6 times in a row). Snow White may have short hair and a rounder face than Cinderella, but logically you must admit that they are similar, and they seem to set the standard for "cartoon girl beauty." (On another note, Japan has it's own standard for cartoon girl beauty as anyone can see)

2. Where did this come from? My impression is that there are many advantages to using a generic girl design in cartoons. First of all, girl characters are often props rather than REAL characters. Someone for the dashing hero to rescue, someone to sing some cute songs, or the lovely prize who is being fought over by suitors. I personally don't have a problem with this, although I'd like to see more of a variety of girl designs just to spice it up. And I don't mean taking the generic girl design and making her nose slightly less upturned and tiny, or making her chin slightly longer, or giving her a "weird" hairdo.

3. Another reason that generic girls are common- they are pretty and appealing, and everyone likes that. One glance at the cherubic faces of Snow White or Cinderella or Ariel and you know that they are good and sweet. You instantly root for them. Boys AND girls like pretty girls, and the generic cartoon standard is based on what most people find pretty in real life (at least thats how it seems to me). By making girl characters less generic you may risk having to work harder to make the character likable (don't get me started on the now generic "cartoon girl personalities" that can be found everywhere). ANOTHER DISCLAIMER. I know someone is gonna misread this and think that I am against "pretty" or some silly thing. I'm certainly not, I wanted to be Briar Rose as a kid and still do. But I also think there is a place in cartoons for girls who's designs are more specific, just like the real girls in our lives that we know and love.

4. Another reason that generic girl designs are common- Animating is hard. Animating girls is really hard...and trying to animate a girl with specific features must be really REALLY hard.

5. One more idea...the word "generic" can be looked at the way I've described above, but some artists can be unique and "generic" at the same time. You could argue that Kiraz, Sokol, and Frazetta all have a "generic" girl type that they draw quite often....but the drawings are only generic because the artist draws a similar design repeatedly- compare any of their girls to the generic girl I have been talking about and there is nothing boring about them. Check out their gorgeous girls (I die happily inside when I look at these):

Kiraz

Sokol

Frazetta (his paintings break my heart...but in a good way)

I may sound like I have been trash talking anything generic, but in this case it's very different. Frazetta, Kiraz, and Sokol may have a preference for how they draw their girls, but they are each so monumentally amazing at drawing that it doesn't matter. The drawings are beautiful in so many ways that the design of the girl is practically inconsequential. It's drawings like these that make me realize that I DEPEND on trying to draw different kind of faces and bodies all the time...It's almost as though I haven't earned the right to even consider settling and having a basic girl design that I can fall back on. I hope someday I can have an ounce of the uniqueness and skill these artists have. Does any of this make sense??

Wow, if you got through all that, then you must be a true pal 'o mine. Thanks for sitting through "Uncle Katie's Theory Corner." I hope lots of people have their own ideas, and that no one thinks I'm being insulting or presumptuous.

AND DON'T FORGET!!!!
Find out what happens to Skadi and the hapless maiden on Dumm Comics!

Goodnight!

Playing with profiles

Whenever I go for long periods of time without thinking very hard about drawing or studying, I go back into generic mode. Lately, tons of profiles exactly like these have been showing up on post-it notes, shopping lists, etc.


BORING!
Time for me to do some weird drawings!


I know not everyone is into seeing study drawings, but I figured I ought to try and post more often, even if it's just stuff like this.

DURR!

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!