Letting the characters loose

I've been uptight for a few months. Loads of deadlines and the pressures of family have stifled my creative spirit. So when I sat down today to sketch some new characters not much happened. Tony's advice in these situations (Tony Champ is my art/illustration mentor) is to scribble very loosely. Just sketch random stick figures dancing and jumping all over the place. Don't aim for any particular pose. Just see what evolves.

In Tony's demos he begins with a blue colouring pencil and sketches a figure, then shifts to a red pencil and moves the figure to a different position, then green etc. It is similar to animating the character. When he's finally happy with a pose, he sketches over the lines in a black pencil or ink.

Here's an example:

Do you see how this little character just jumped out of the colour scribbles? Cute isn't he?

Here's another one:

Perhaps he's a victim planning his revenge. He certainly looks grumpy.

Ok, my turn to have a go.

I have to let those characters loose, relax my attitude and not be too hard on myself. Then my first happy little character danced onto the page... Minus hands, but nevermind.

You can hardly see the blue lines I drew and that's the beauty of the blue line. They seem to recede when you draw over them and nearly disappear when photocopied or scanned. This can benefit the artist who feels restricted by the darker line. The blue line lets you make mistakes and be free! Then when you're happy with it, go over it in a darker medium.

My next sketch evolved into a ballerina exercising. Don't ask me why. It was the scribble muse...

What happened after that was a surprise. The character I had been looking for and wishing for climbed onto the page and up the apple tree, where she began to swing her legs and read a book. Finally a character I could work with. Do you want to see her?

Where's the apple tree?

This blog post is about letting characters loose not trees.

Maybe next week.

Here she is:

You still want the tree?

What? You're hanging out for it?


So was she...