Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Cavies & Fat Pig

Cavies are guineau pigs. They pretty much just look like cute little puff balls. There's more than twenty kinds, but I only drew three. And here's a fat pig to end it off.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Piggies!

I think pigs are really fun animals and they've got a lot of potential. Too bad they just lie around in the same pose all day. And piglets move almost as much as chickens, even when sleeping they quiver. But so cute.


Tried to see if I could convert to line only. I think it'd be better if the lines were more continuous.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Sheep, goats, alpacas

A bit of Weatherly influence on the above. If you haven't got his book yet, get it. It's very good. Brian really liked this one, said it had nice economy of line. I think a few more lines on the body would've given it much more volume. Oh well.

No, she's not levitating the sheep on the right, it was on a small metal platform that I didn't draw in.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Bulls

Tried to stay away from drawing the same way I did last year. It's hard not blocking-in or working big to small, but I think it turned out okay. Grease pencil.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Cows

Chickens rarely stay still but cows hardly move at all. Cows are more like limited animation, where just the jaw moves and the rest of the cow is a held cel. This year, I tried a few drawings "straight ahead" without really blocking it in. Kinda shows.

Royal Winter Fair 2006 - Chicks

I always have fun at the Royal Winter Fair. I tend to go overboard, spending the whole day there last year and this year. This year, I focused on two things: trying different tools and trying to capture the animal as quickly as possible (so as not to get too attached to any single drawing). That resulted in a lot of throwaways (about 80 pages worth) ... so next year I think I'll change my tactics and take my time. Less is more, right? :)

Here are some of the original pages before putting them together to hand in. Chicks move too fast. Brush pen + marker, Grease pencil, Layout pencil.

Contrasting Characters

Here are the pose and turnaround sheets (with a fancy schmancy line added) for my Contrasting Characters assignment. My goal here was to make much more appealing, entertaining characters - with real distinct personality - without flattening out the characters too much. Whether I succeeded or not, well, you decide.



As always, I see quite a number of things to improve on, but I'm pretty happy with it and of all the assignments done this term, I'm probably proudest of this one.

Weight Lift & Toss Character Design

Here are the pose and turnaround sheets for my Weight Lift and Toss character design. Very "sculptural" as Emslie said, but I definitely felt it was missing something... something I tried very hard to achieve in my next assignment (Contrasting Characters). Check my next post and tell me if you think I "got it".



Yeah, I know. This is also old work... I'll try posting something more recent soon.

ROM Bones

Animal skeletons from the ROM bone room (not open to the general public). The room was so small and packed that we had to split into three groups, each with only about two hours to draw. The assignment was to do a 5 minute sketch followed by a longer study from a different angle. I've got three 5-10 minutes sketches and 2 longer studies. I completed one later using my block-in and photo reference I took.

More Life Drawing...

Trying new and different ways of drawing and slowly getting myself back on track...

This is either a 30s or a 1m, followed by 2m's.

First Life Drawing of Year 2

Pretty rusty... I didn't do any life drawing over the summer.


People tell me they really like the 30 (above), but it's my least favourite. No one really likes the 2 minute blind one (below), but I do. Brian had us all try these different exercises including blind drawing, memory drawing, and left-hand (or other hand) drawing. It's pretty cool but unfair to mark us based on something we've never done... and giving us only 2 tries.

I love these ten second dwgs... never drew so fast before. The first dozen were crap but I got my rhythm by the last few.