Sunday, January 22, 2012

Dancing Thursdays 2

It was another night of dancing at Rockko’s, I didn't stay long
and I decided to focus on a clowder of cats that 
were having too much fun swing dancing. 
It was a snowy night and the cat at the bottom-left actually bust out a Charleston move in her snow boots!
The one at the top-right saw me drawing so she posed for me.

You can see the two at the top were enjoying doing the Charlston with each other.       

I’ve got more drawings of Rockko and I’ll post those when I get a chance.  I’m very fortunate to have friends like Perry and Spec who invited me out to this place and to Rockko who let me sit in the corner and draw
(I’m one of the few humans there…). 

---on a serious note though:
I do these drawing exercises because I live in a smaller town away from the bustling big cities and I don’t have the resources that artists have in Los Angeles, NYC or, Toronto.   Sometimes it is tough to be inspired.
Those cities have free (or cheap) weekly figure drawing sessions, if not daily, and you have other artists from major animation, comic book companies to hang out with.
So I follow what my heroes (like Chuck Jones, Jack Kirby, or James Gurney) did.

They drew.   

Nothing magical, nothing instantaneous, nothing complicated, nothing expensive.

They drew constantly.  They were almost attached to a piece of paper and pencil.
They observed the world, and recorded it on paper.  They challenged themselves. 

So, like any good athlete, I keep training.
I admit the swing dancing cats aren’t a big creative leap, but 
they were tough to draw because they move so fast….
and the one cat didn’t really stop and pose for me, she just walked by and
I had to capture how cute she was in her babushka, glasses and skirt.  
 Also by going places and drawing, I make just as good friends as I would make anywhere else, 

even better.


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