Drawergeeks- Tiki

Here's my submission for Drawergeeks this week. The theme is

"Tiki"

You can check out the other cool entries this week here.

A is for Anteater

I've decided to create a little assignment for myself. Faced with the prospect of not being able to post my work for Disney any longer, I started wondering what sort of material I would be able to put up on this blog with any regularity. I don't get out to figure draw nearly as much as I'd like and honestly my favorite/most successful drawings are generally quick character sketches. But even those are few and far between without a specific assignment to spur them into being. So I decided, simply to give myself some structure, I'm going to go through the alphabet, doing an animal sketch for each letter. I don't know that it will be every day, but at least when I get that "gotta post something feeling", at least I will have a starting place. I may go all the way to color with some of these, or they may just be quick sketches- the point is just to keep drawing.

And so I present the letter A...

Anteater

Anteater- a poem by Eric

(written very late at night)

Oh if I were an anteater

How grand life would be

On a branch I would teeter

way up in my tree

And the ants would all swarm

in their special ant way

but I'd never eat 'em-

I like burritos.

©Eric Scales 2009

Sabrina

I used to really enjoy, and get good drawings when drawing little kids. Being so active, they present a myriad of poses, whereas us adults tend to make more, um, sedentary, models. My daughter Sabrina is very active, however, I never seem to have my sketchbook unless she's quietly reading or coloring.

I'm always amazed at how when you really look, kids fit some of the cartoon stereotypes so perfectly, and yet some very distinct characteristics aren't as often captured. Obviously their faces are chubby, and their eyes are big, but when drawing all of these, I find I'm surprised at how small her neck and shoulders are, but that they are not necessarily compact.

Once, after having mentioned off handedly to Sabrina that a good way to make a drawing cute was to have the bridge of the nose to be short, thus bringing it closer in line with the eyes, Sabrina and I were drawing together. We used each other as models. As I roughly sketched out a quick pencil portrait of her, she peered over and said, "Um, that's good Daddy, but could you make my nose closer to my eyes please?"