Preston Blair 10

This month’s Master is Preston Blair.

This month’s Master is “Preston Blair”. He is a famous animator who worked on most of the classic Disney Characters we have come to love. Unlike our craft master Andrew Loomis, Preston incorporates a lot of gesture into his taught drawing process. This is why we have selected him as the Master of the month. Loomis’ process is more friendly and easier to learn while Preston’s has a bigger learning curve. To get the most out of this month we recommend reading and working through Loomis’ first chapter of Fun with a pencil and then use that process to draw Preston’s character sheets uploaded above. Once you are comfortable working with shapes, try to incorporate Preston’s lively approach and pattern theories. And important part of really getting the hang of this is to apply the techniques to your own drawing.

Exercises:

1. Copy Heads from Loomis’ Book according to his method. If a certain head is giving you trouble. Draw it multiple times. Don’t feel pressured to rush. Just take you time and wait till you feel confident before you move to the next page. Try not to spend more than 20 minutes on a head. If it’s not working after 20 minutes. Take a deep breath and start the same drawing again. Remember the process is about getting shapes to talk to each other to describe a face. Don’t blindly copy, if you’re doing it right your drawings will look quite different from the book at first. Just keep practicing!
2. After a few heads, draw your own! If they look crazy figure out why and really try to rationalize what’s going wrong or right. It’s like a puzzle, each piece on the face should connect together. If you find yourself frustrated go back to copying. Flip flop a lot of the strongest effect!
3. Copy Preston’s drawings using Loomis’ step by step method. It’s not going to be easy. You’ll have to consider gesture and draw full bodies here and there. This is the advanced study for the month and should be approached when you want to mix things up or you feel like you are starting to get good at funny faced gnome people. I recommend you start with the faces here and work your way up.
4. Circles… If you are bored and anywhere where drawing is appropriate… Practice those circles from Fun with a pencil. You should try and draw them lightly. Draw the outer circle quickly to keep the sides smooth. You’ll get a lot of lumpy ones but keep going!
5. If you find yourself struggling and nothing is looking right… You are likely trying too hard to copy it exactly as it is in the book. Let go of that. You are not as good as Loomis or Blair yet, so… You’re copies won’t look perfect. Focus of building relationship between the shapes you CAN draw. If it’s too hard, change it to something easier. Some techniques to make it easier is to switch to a pen and draw fast and large for a bit. Then go back to the pencil. The pen will force you to recognize what shape trips you up.

[MAY] Craft Info: [link]
[MAY] Master Info: [link]

[MAY] Master-Craft Submission Folder: [link]