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Things I Hate To Draw
I like to draw cartoons. And it's a good thing, because it's my bread and butter.
But even someone who loves to draw, and does a fair amount of it, finds some subjects they just hate.
So here's the stuff I hate drawing in cartoons:
- Horses - Mine always look like sausages with stick legs. Seriously. If I ever get a horse I'm going to name it bratwurst.
- Orchestras - I used to be a musician, so I get lost in the details. Plus there's a crapload to draw. If I did these more often I'd really have to do some research to see how other cartoons have done it.
- Cars - I always have to go out to the driveway, take a picture of the car, and work from that. And it still looks awful. Cars today are just so roundy. Oh for the days when cars were either boxy or jet-inspired.
- Wolves - It's had to find the right balance between a dog, and Wile E. Coyote.
- Bananas - You have to get the curves and straight lines just right, or it looks like one of my horses without the stick legs. And that little stem portion is a bugger too.
- Skeletons - I can do it, and make it look pretty good, but it's gotta be a really killer skeleton joke to justify the time. I guess you could say they're the bone of my existence. (But you shouldn't.)
- Cell phones - It used to be you could show that little nub of an antenna, or the open flip phone, but now it's difficult to tell if your character is talking into an iPhone or a bar of soap.
I'm sure there's more, but that's some of the worst.
There's plenty of artists that read this blog. What about you guys? What do you hate to draw?
Comments
I find anything mechanical is a pain in the bum. Probably because I can't draw a straight line!
Posted by: Matt Glover | Sep 25, 2006 at 8:22 pm
I used to be a draftsman (er, draftswoman). I hated drawing pipeline booster-station as-builts. The field notes were always made by some joker sitting in a pickup at the end of the day, drinking a cold beer and trying to remember what they put in ground that day. And it was never funny!
Posted by: Fontessa | Sep 25, 2006 at 9:40 pm
hands.
Posted by: paul soupiset | Sep 25, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Cars. There's a reason why Karl rarely seems to drive anywhere. And houses. Which is why he's usually inside or at the pond. And don't get me started on garages (houses for cars.)
Posted by: mark heath | Sep 26, 2006 at 11:40 am
LOL! Actually, houses and storefronts don't bother me too much. I try to draw just enough to get the idea across and no more.
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 26, 2006 at 3:34 pm
I also hate drawing pipeline booster-station as-builts. Honestly, who doesn't?!
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 26, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Really! I mean frogs and pointy-nosed men are ever so much better
Posted by: Fontessa | Sep 26, 2006 at 9:40 pm
LOL! OK… Didn't mean to hurt any feelings… Especially from one of my fave readers!
BTW, what's the "as-built" part mean?
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 27, 2006 at 7:51 am
I love when it's done well, but I hate drawing cityscapes — especially in perspectives with extreme angles (a la Spiderman). I don't often find myself in those situations, but maybe that's because I don't enjoy it, so I avoid it.
Posted by: Jason Kotecki | Sep 27, 2006 at 9:19 am
Oooh… Yeah. Those are bad too…
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 27, 2006 at 10:33 am
Oooh… Yeah. Those are bad too…
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 27, 2006 at 10:33 am
So bad I apparently posted it twice!
Posted by: Andertoons | Sep 27, 2006 at 10:33 am
No, No! I was agreeing with you!
Re: As-builts … Pipelines need booster stations, to maintain pressure and help push the product on down the line. But what an engineer designs back in the office doesn't always work out in the field, and the construction team has to make adjustments. So it is up to the job site superintendent to make sure his new measurements, field notes, and sketches are accurate.
As a draftsman, it can be tedious and mind-numbing, to check and recheck every detail of the two drawings, making the adjustments work on paper … thus producing accurate "as-built in the field drawings" which are the only ones that count.
Now they have computers, in the field and in the office!
Posted by: Fontessa | Sep 28, 2006 at 1:07 am