{"id":15324,"date":"2013-06-24T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T14:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2013\/06\/24\/life-saving-techniques\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:12","slug":"life-saving-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2013\/06\/24\/life-saving-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"Life-Saving Techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m at the pub, where I’ve been organising my work for the week and doing some drawing practice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

Last week’s work was a real breakthrough: Although I already knew the principles, somehow stressing the importance of using good shapes, lines, and reasonable anatomy has all lifted my ability to another level. Less freaky feet and hands! I’m thinking through the bones and muscles more than I was, and it’s helping.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The challenge with cartooning is balancing the development of an effective shorthand — less detail makes for characters that are cuter, cleaner, more expressive, and easier to read — yet holding true enough to real life that the reader’s brain can relate to these simple shapes as their real-world equivalents without experiencing cognitive dissonance, like “Is that a hand or a lobster claw? What is she supposed to be holding?”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I’m also working on my lettering, because that’s another area where I felt I had a sloppiness that undermined my efforts. I don’t want to use fonts; I want to be able to hand-letter my drawings — do the whole thing on paper — and have it look good enough to use.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

Shapes, anatomy, and lettering are something I’ve taken from the Franco-Belgian comics I’ve been studying. I also like the way they integrate machines and buildings and other background elements — things besides characters, that is. This is something I’ve long neglected.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So here’s a lovely old Morris I saw in town the other day:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

The urge to do all these things has shifted — happily — from overwhelm, self-deprecation, and envy to a sense of possibility: If I can draw all this stuff, I can capture ideas and stories on paper better.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Then comes the scary void: “Okay, so with these skills, what will you say?”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I don’t know yet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the sketchbook is my best outlet, and my life my best material to connect with. So, asking myself about what’s going on, this is what I drew (and I was pleasantly surprised that the anatomy was just there, better than before, simply because I’m thinking about it, it seems):<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

I know it’s not the healthiest motivation in the world, but I want to save my husband. His work is killing him right now. He doesn’t know how to do anything but his best ability, and there’s just too much work to do for him to be able to do it all to that level. He likes the work, and it’s not like he wants to be idle, but I would really love to be able to take him away from this crushing demand and let him just do something else — travel, use his languages, or even do good work like this but not have to deal with the horrid bureaucracy of the National Health Service.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m at the pub, where I’ve been organising my work for the week and doing some drawing practice. Last week’s work was a real breakthrough: Although I already knew the principles, somehow stressing the importance of using good shapes, lines, and reasonable anatomy has all lifted my ability to another level. Less freaky feet and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}