Yesterday I was reading Emily one of my very favorite bedtime stories. It is called Knuffle Bunny Too ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity’. It happens to be a sequel to Knuffle Bunny ‘A Cautionary Tale‘. These books have great stories about a little girl named Trixie and her stuffed toy Knuffle Bunny. Thank you Mo Williams for these great books. Not only are these stories great, but the artistic quality is wonderful too. All of the artwork in these books are black and white photos with the cartoon characters drawn into the real pictures. They are a joy to examine.

After the story was done, I had a few minutes to kill be before Mary got home from work so I was playing around with my sketch book. As you may know, I have have been working on drawing cartoons as of late. It just so happens I was working on the section of Cartooning for the Beginner by Christopher Hart that very same day. The section was about making sure your body type matches your character. Anyway, two of the characters I was practicing from the book looked like they could be found in a gym. So I thought it might be cool to try and create a picture like that found in the Knuffle Bunny books.

I took out my drawing pad for the computer and started trying to create the first character that I had drawn on paper earlier. Let’s call him ‘Buff Dude’. I then did a quick search of the web to find a photo of an empty gym. Once I had that in hand it did not take long to turn the photo in to a black and white picture. Next I had to merge the cartoon with the photo. That wasn’t too tricky either so I decided to add the next gym rat. I wanted ‘Skinny Dude’ to be looking at the eliptical and thinking ‘oh man I don’t want to do that’. However, I had some issues making him the correct size for the placement I wanted. Click on the image below to see the full sized version. This picture needs a lot of work yet. For example, Mr. Skinny needs to have a reflection in the mirror. He also needs to be a bit bigger too so I can place him in the location I intended. Anyway, it was a fun little experiment that I might try again later.

This past year has been amazingly successful for me at work. It did not come without a cost however. Over the past few years I have spent countless hours outside the office programming and researching work related items. However sometimes you just need a break. Many years back now during my High School days, I used to be the president of the school Art Club. My career has taken me very far away from that line of thought for many years. Personally, I can tell my skills have diminished in a major way over the years. To that end, I have decided that since drawing is so different than programming that this would be a great hobby to spend a few hours at now and then as a break from work.

A few weeks ago I picked up a moleskine notebook and found a few drawing pencils I had stashed away down in the basement and started distracting my brain with drawing. For some odd reason, I have an interest in drawing funny cartoon characters right now. I’m pretty sure this is because my main line of support in this endeavor are my kids. Not to mention, learning how to draw a crazy character does not take too much time and fits very nicely into my schedule.

It’s been years now since I have drawn and the creative side of my brain has shriveled to a small lump of gray matter the size of a raisin. Needless to say, this cute dragon did not spawn from my creative mind. No, I decided the best way to get my skills back was to start from the beginning. I have found a quite a few beginning drawing websites online, but my favorite has to be “How Stuff Works: How to Draw Cartoons“. This is where I will start my adventure. I plan to practice on a few of the cartoon characters that can be found on that website. I have also been looking over my “1-2-3 Draw Cartoon Aliens” book too. Matt got me this book a few years back and both Emily and I have been enjoying making the funny little alien creatures.

Just for the fun of it, I thought I would post a few articles about the different items that I draw. I’m just getting started so I’m sure my methods are not the best and I will continue to refine them over time. For this dragon, I actually started with my moleskine, a pencil, an eraser and a pen. I could not sleep one night so I followed the steps on the above website and I drew out this little dragon. The next morning Emily and Mary saw him and they liked him a lot. So the next late evening that I had free, I sketched him again but this time on the computer. I thought it might be interesting if I described the steps I went through in order to make him.

First off, I have a wacom drawing tablet that I picked up from Best Buy a while back when this drawing idea was festering in my head. The tablet allows you to draw on your computer as if you had a pencil in your hand. There are many different grades of tablets out there. I didn’t go crazy with my purchase, but I didn’t buy the cheapest one either. I think I have a 4″ x 6″ tablet that allows for 1024 levels of presure. The later item being the most important to me. For drawing cartoons it probably doesn’t make any difference at all. I hope to do a ‘pencil drawing’ 100% on the tablet later and that will become important then.

The tablet came with a program called “Corel Painter Essentials 3″. This program works really well for sketching and painting. I’m sure a true artist could make that program sit up and beg, but I am not that person yet. I use this program to sketch out my drawings. It supports layers so I can try different items over the top of things that I have already completed. When you draw with pen and paper you do this by drawing a rough sketch and then erase the lines you don’t want. You can do something similar with layers where you can ‘move on’ without risking the work underneath that you really like.

Once I have the sketching all done, I then capture a single picture of the image and move it into a program called ‘Skitch‘. I’m sure there are many fancier programs out there in the wild, but Skitch is free and it works really well for making the deep dark vector lines that make up the final drawing. When I draw in Corel, it’s just like pen and paper. If I can’t hold my hand steady, then the line won’t be steady. With Skitch, if I draw a line it will automaticlly smooth it out for me. This allows me to create a professional feel to the drawing. Once I’m done outlining the drawing in Skitch, I can throw away the part that I was copying and then move it back to Corel.

Corel is great for painting! I just love their water color, pencil and colored pencil utilities. It looks just like the real thing without all the mess. I think water colored cartoons are really cool, but there is no way I’m going to try and water color for real. At least not at this point in time. So with Corel, I am able to color in my dragon with an effect that looks like water colors.

So, attached below are the ’steps’ that my dragon went through as I created him on the computer. I plan on posting a few more sketches as I relax with my drawings. Check back again and see what crazy thing I’m drawing next.