Learning from a Disney Artist, Light and Shadow, and More

This has been a fun week.

I recently discovered Disney Artist Stephen Silver’s Silver Drawing Academy. I’ll write more about that in a future post - but it’s perfect timing and he and his tutorials have been super helpful in designing my characters and poses. He’s great at recognizing the essence of gestures. I’ll post some before and after drawings with my next post.

There’s actually 2 wonderful books that are great for learning gesture. It’s Walt Stanchfield’s Drawn to Life 20 Years Golden Years of Disney Master Classes.

Here’s an example from book 1.

At left is a Disney intern drawing from life. At right is Walt Stanchfield’s quick gesture. Which do you think does a better job of “man leaning back holding his knee?”

Another one - again the intern on the left and Disney artist on right:

Which one looks like he’s pleading?

But to get back to light and shadow, here’s a time-lapse where I played around with light and shadow to put the focus on Mary fleeing a rock slide.

One of the great dangers of Mary Anning’s work was digging in an area where rocks were always shifting and falling from the cliff. The best time to find fossils was the winter - but that was also the time of greatest risk. She went out every day and tried to excavate all she could because she never knew if the shifting rocks or crashing waves would obscure some fossils forever.

Today’s video is shows how I played around with light and shadow to direct the eye to Mary and a fleeing woodpecker who was a journalist visiting her as she worked on the cliffs.

Thanks for reading this far! Huge thanks to Tanya for becoming a founding member! You’re helping my dream of becoming an independent artist.