Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Even Zombies Have Gestures

Alec Stevens, one of my instructors at the Joe Kubert School, use to stress the importance of gesture drawings. Capturing the essence of the pose in its most simple form. At the time, I was a perfectionist, holding my pencil in a death grip and drawing every line with a concentrated purpose. I did very little sketching, and even when I did, I would never ever show these "imperfect" drawings to anyone without a lot of internal pain & embarrassment. As much as I tried, I could just never loosen up to do some decent gestures. Not even in life drawing class. Thanks to Alec pushing me, his lessons stuck with me over the years, even today. I'm a much different artist now than I was then. Gesture drawings are the beginning of every great pose I've ever done. And cartoon zombies are no exception! I'm working on a project for a friend that I can't discuss at this point. But I can tell you that I'm drawing cartoon zombies. As I'm fleshing out some of the zombies, I wanted to share a couple of gesture drawings with you. Why? Because I rarely show anyone these early-stage sketches, and because I wanted to say THANK YOU, ALEC STEVENS.