It takes restraint not to re-post everything Jillian writes on her blog over here. But take a moment to check out her advice on drawing animals in this post – “There is no formula to trick to drawing animals, or anything else for that matter. Only observation (ideally from life) and practice will give you a fundamental understanding of structure and form.”

Check Jillian’s illustration gallery here to see how uses animals in her illustrations regularly to evoke motion and emotion to great effect.

Posted by Matt Forsythe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: advice, animals, drawing tips, how to draw, How-To, Jillian Tamaki, tricks

In the spirit of our recent post about Harmony – the beautiful html5 drawing tool – comes flame. Another online drawing toy that lets you draw with a brush of flames. You pick the colour and brush size.

Posted by Matt Forsythe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 4 comments
Tags: Drawing, flames, How-To, online toys, websites

Mark McDonnell teaches life drawing at Disney and Dreamworks. He’s posted a small series of videos on his blog to help share some of his tips and lessons. See them at his YouTube channel.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 16 comments
Tags: Drawing, How-To, life drawing, Mark McDonnell

In these videos, Gabe Swarr shows how he creates his webcomic Big Pants Mouse using, first, Photoshop for his roughs, and then Flash for his final artwork. Note how Gabe pulls parts of his characters, pre-drawn, from a library of stock parts, but also mentions how he does this only when appropriate, and still draws poses from scratch when stock pieces don’t exist.

(via Cartoon Brew)

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 8 comments
Tags: artcast, Comics, flash, Gabe Swarr, How-To, process, video, Webcomics

Cartoonist and Dreamworks storyboard artist Rad Sechrist has a how-to blog, rich with drawing tips, anatomy lessons, and and other bits of wisdom. It’s a fantastic resource, and I’ve already bookmarked it for future visits. Link: Rad How To

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 7 comments
Tags: anatomy, Drawing, How-To, Resources, storyboards

Mike Lynch shares some of his tips for traveling with ink, nibs, and brushes. Taping a brush between two pieces of card stock is brilliant, and I don’t know why I never thought of it before.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 2 comments
Tags: How-To, inking, Mike Lynch

Missile Mouse artist Jake Parker offers up a look at his process in a post titled Fixing It Old School.

Not only do we see his rough sketches, and editorial process, but he reveals how he fixes an inking mistake without (gasp!) using Photoshop.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | One comment
Tags: Comics, How-To, Jake Parker, process

I can’t imagine characters more fun to draw!

Looks like Fred Seibert is sharing a whack of stuff on Scribd, for various animated shows, including scripts, storyboards, media kits, and character bibles like this one.

Love this bit:

We’re not looking for “on model” drawings.
We’re looking for “in character” drawings.

(via @bobjinx)

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 3 comments
Tags: Adventure Time, Animation, Cartooning, draw, How-To

Stephen Silver offers us this glimpse at his latest efforts for the Schoolism online art classes. The Masters Series: In the Studio With… is an ongoing documentary/interview series conducted by Stephen in the home studios of some cartooning greats. The first episode features iconic MAD Magazine caricaturist and parody artist Mort Drucker.

Stephen is as passionate about teaching others to love drawing as he is about drawing itself, so this is sure to be a great collection.

This short clips only whets my appetite for the full video, which will set you back $40.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | One comment
Tags: Caricature, Cartooning, documentary, How-To, MAD Magazine, mort drucker, process, Stephen Silver, video

Work In Progress is a blog that shows comics pages coming to life from initial sketches to finished piece, with various stages in between. The images are all in Flash, and we see them blend seamlessly into each other, which makes for an interesting effect. The blog is in Spanish, but you certainly don’t need to be able to read any of the words to appreciate the work here.

Shown here, the work of Enrique Fernández.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 2 comments
Tags: Comics, Drawing, How-To, process