Good quote! I shall practice, practice, practice!

Fun to be posting my art again. I have a couple cartoon characters I need to scan, too.

The problem with waists is it's too easy to think of it as external lines. The shape is more important. It might be worth your while to draw some stuff without lines. Just shade in the body instead.

Also, with anatomy- the big thing for waists is to remember that the bottom curve is your hips, so they're convex from the torso (you basically have that here) and the upper curve is your ribcage, so they're also convex. The sharp concave curve looks like a corset because real waists are closer to two convex curves meeting.
Sp you might also try starting form there and padding it out. If your character isn't ribby or downright anorexic, you might consider going mostly straight up from the hips at chest width.


I have a lot of oldish stuff on my flickr. I'm pretty sure it's all on deviantart as well, right here- http://shadowviking.deviantart.com/
Newest stuff online has been for wordbuilding stuff for a fantasy rpg setting, and you can see it right here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowviki ... 127635677/

Awesome stuff, SV! I really like your style. My favorite is probably the elven sorceress; very well drawn.



I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

In art, you have value, and contour. Contour is lines. Value is shading. When drawing people based on lines, it's very easy to accidentally draw what looks like a paper doll, because real people don't have outlines.
Instead of having an edge, just take whatever you colour or shade or shadow with and draw the shape (say, of a body) directly.

Ah! You mean draw people who don't have black lines around them! I get it now. That's actually very nifty... I shall try it out. While I prefer a more Chris Hart style (heavy outlines), this sounds intriguing.

I'm not suggesting a style change... it's just good practice.

my two bits:
any shaping, shading, and reverse artwork you can do is good practice.
Greyscale is one of the easiest ways to work with the 'shaping-shading' stuff, because the graphite blending is easy to move and gives you chance to focus on the object and your 'goal of definition without lines'.
It's easy to transfer what you glean into all other styles of art.
Also things like small 'hatching, cross-hatching, and dots' make some interesting borderless borders.

Very interesting. Thanks, MC!

Here's some over-the-top cartoon characters:





The "Bond Babe" in this one was based off of, although not an exact copy, of a lesson in my Chris Hart book. The rest are entirely made up.

These look pretty good!
You have some good light and dark skin tones, your faces are coming along as well.

Very cool! And bloody.