Learning to Draw: Sketching a Cartoon Part 2 of 3

Alrighty part 1 was nothing. Here we're going to get into more detail. Awesomeness. Yes.

Ok, so we tried drawing by just looking at a reference.  It may have been a disaster or it may have been pretty good.  But, honestly there are easier ways.  The next thing you can do is use guides.  With guides you're just drawing out lines on your reference image and then just drawing them out on your sketch pad exactly as you did on your reference.  Here's where you use your tracing paper.  You'll put the tracing paper over the image and then draw the lines on the tracing paper.

Paper and Pencil peoples

Preparing the reference image:

• Draw a vertical line down the center of Chris (or image of choice).
• Draw a horizontal line across the center of Chris
• Next, draw a horizontal line across the center of his nose

It should look like this

This is as far as I went with the lined guides in the video but you can add more.  I'll show ya in a pic.

• Draw a horizontal line at the very top of his hat
• Draw a horizontal line at the very bottom of his foot that is touch the floor
• Draw a vertical line at the very edge of the hand that would be on the frets (hand in air)
• Draw a vertical line at the very edge of his elbow on the other arm (arm on belly)
• Draw a vertical line on the very edge of the foot in the air
• Draw a vertical line on the very bottom of the foot in the air

Drawing the lines on your sketch pad

First let me tell you to make sure you sketch these lines VERY LIGHTLY cause you'll need to erase them later.

• Take your ruler and measure line A from the top of his has to the bottom of his foot on the floor.  Now draw that exact length on your sketchpad. 
• Now take the ruler and find where line A and line B intersect. Take your ruler back to your sketchpad and put a little dot at that exact spot. So, if on the reference image they intersected at 4 and 3/4ths , you'll put a dot at 4 and 3/4ths on line A on your sketchpad. 
• Now that the dot is made, turn your ruler horizontally and make your line for line B
• Remember how I told you to draw the exact length for line A? Well, that's to make this step easier.  Just draw line D at the top and line E at the bottom. 
• Alrighty, take your ruler back to the reference image and measure how far line F is from line A.  Go back to the sketchpad and draw the line.
• Again, measure how far line G is from line A. Draw line.
• Ditto for line H
• Measure how far line I is from line B. Draw line

Alrighty then! I remember why I haven't made a tutorial thing before. I suck at explaining things lol.

Computer Peoples

I made a video because I don't know how to explain or show in pictures what you need to do. It's actually much easier.



Ok, all those lines will help you with proportions.  You shouldn't make him too tall or too wide with those lines there.  Remember though that it's not going to be an exact copy of your reference image.  Why would you want that anyway? This is your interpretation, that's what makes it art! ;)

Using shapes as guides

The other thing you can do is use shapes as guides.  In this next video I used the first 3 steps in the lined guides and then added circles.  I used circles (ovals, whatever. round things!) because most cartoons are very rounded, especially in this case since Chris has plenty to love. I'm not sure how to explain it, you can see in the video. But basically, you look at where the head is, tummy, man boobs, etc and draw where they should be.  An arm (without the hand) is 4 circles.  The shoulder, upper arm, elbow and lower arm.  I didn't do the shoulder part in the video but it worked.  Of course this is just for a cartoon.  An actual person is much more complex.

Anyways, here's the video. Enjoy some Smashing Pumpkins. :)



Ok that's it for part 2. Hopefully it helped some and wasn't too confusing (I'm so bad at explaining thing).

Part 3 will be up in a couple days. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Check ya later!!