Tag: cartoon

Cartoon Drawing Tips for Kids

Cartoons are fun. Well almost. If you are like me you certainly love to watch cartoon figures. But drawing cartoons is another story particularly if you are not aware of the basics.

If the thought of creating beautiful cartoon characters gives you high, read on, here you will find some tips that you can readily use to improve your skills and reduce the time taken to create beautiful cartoon characters.

There are certain things that are same for every style of drawing, be it realistic drawing or cartoony, now we will go quickly through the basics before getting specific to cartoony style.

1. Select your tools wisely. Clean your hands before starting your drawing. The paper you use for your work should be of good quality. Low grade, off colored paper will make your drawing look pale. Your first sketch should be made with light lines and for finalizing you should use deep-colored and prominent lines –so choose your pencils carefully.

2. Many times beginners find drawing a smooth line difficult. Remember drawing smooth lines will be easier if you do not support your hand on your wrist like we are used to do while writing. Doodling and drawing some circular shapes just before you start will also help you to draw smoothly.

3. Learn to draw facial features and hand carefully. Hands are more difficult. Experts often judge a person’s drawing ability from how well he can draw human hands. So practice drawing hands with care.

4. Study about basic forms and proportions of human body. Learn about basics of human anatomy and various ratios of human figures.

As a cartoon creator you will have certain liberties, you do not need to bind yourself with strict body proportions rules. You can draw four fingered (Thumb + Three) hand that makes your work a bit easier.

But one challenge you will face while drawing cartoons –cartoon characters needs to be more expressive and certainly you have to create this expressiveness with some lines drawn with your pencil.

Keep in mind that three areas of human face that play major role to express emotions are

1. Eyelids (wide open, half closed, almost fully closed etc.),

2. Eyebrows (raised, normal, crooked etc.) and

3. Lips (forming downward bow, upward bow etc.).

Other than these you can also use, hair (properly combed or ruffled), garments (well kept or torn) to create characters that tells a story.

Hope you find this tips useful. Coupled with some practice these tips will help you to take your cartoon drawing skills to a new level. Enjoy the fun of drawing beautiful and expressive cartoon characters.

3 Top Cartoon Drawing Tips for Beginners

Cartooning is not about drawing it is about telling stories. Yes, even when you are drawing a single illustration you are telling a story. Cartooning is about expressing your thoughts. And it is your thoughts expressed beautifully through your cartoon characters that make you different from other average cartoon makers.

But as in every other field of life here also you must learn to walk first before you try running. To express your thoughts and ideas through your cartoon characters, you need to master the skill of cartoon drawing first. Then of course you can use your cartoon drawing skills to tell story to your liking.

To be skilled in cartoon drawing you have to face a learning curve. You just can’t decide to be a cartoonist then copy some popular cartoon figures and become an accomplished cartoonist who is rich and famous. If you are lucky and talented with keen sense of observation you may pickup one or two tricks by making copy of popular cartoon figures. But that is too inadequate to be of any use.

There are various ways that you can take to learn cartoon drawing –you can join cartooning school or take a home study course or follow a book of an expert cartoonist — the bottom line is you have to follow the steps. Like you should first teach yourself drawing 3d shapes, then learn to stretch, squash those 3d shapes in your drawing. Next you need to practice things like drawing hands and head before moving on to motion and emotion and advanced things like that.

If it sounds like lot of work, you are right. But what you achieve at the end is worth working for. If you are smart however you can use the tips you are going to discover here to make the whole learning process fast and painless.

1. Do not start with computers. I agree I run the risk of sounding backdated. But here I am not opposing usage of computer altogether, no sane person can do that. But for beginners there is no alternative to using paper and pencil.

There are various software that help you so much that you can go ahead even without learning how to draw a smooth line. This kind of over dependency on computers from the very beginning always backfires down the road.

2. Nail the fact in your mind that construction of human, animal, cars and most of the things that that we see around us are complex 3d structures though we draw them on paper which is 2D. So when drawing you must mentally analyze your model in terms of 3d shapes like spheres and boxes and not in terms of 2d shapes like circles and rectangles.

Also when you draw something from paper (i.e. 2D), look for and find out the 3d shapes that make up the character.

3. Most of the cartoon drawing or figure drawing tutorials always start with some basic 3d shapes and after a number of steps end up in a complete and beautiful figure. This technique is very effective in learning how we can draw complex figures starting with simple shapes. But what I am going to tell you will make your pace of learning even faster. It is in fact very simple way of using the same tutorial. Just a lot more effective.

What you need to do is start where the tutorial ends and go backward from there. See the completed figure and try to recognize the ingredient basic shapes. And compare your analysis with the exact shapes that are used in the tutorial.

This will give you a very through exercise in recognizing the basic shapes. And after some time you will be analyzing the real life around you like an expert. Just take your time and practice this technique, and see how fast it will improve your skill in cartoon drawing.

Cartoon drawing is pure fun both for professionals who earn their living through cartooning and hobbyists who draw cartoon only for personal pleasure. I do not know what you goal is but hope the tips here will be helpful for you. Never stop learning: there are a whole lot to learn and even more fun to have in the process. Happy journey!