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.
Bobby Chiu of Schoolism online art classes has started doing a regular series of streaming video evenings on Ustream called, obviously, CHIU-Stream. He talks and answers questions while drawing a topic chosen by viewers at the beginning of the show.
He also interviews famous atists on occasion. Here’s a recent interview Bobby did with character designer Stephen Silver:
The next artist interview will be with the great Peter de Sève tomorrow night, live, Wednesday Oct 7 at 11:30pm 11:00pm EST. He’ll be picking a topic to sketch or paint and then participants sketch that topic for the duration of the interview. Peter will then select a winner and that winner will get a Peter de Sève original drawing mailed to him/her. Check it all out on CHIU-Stream.
EDIT: Bobby informs me that the Peter de Sève interview is now at 11:00pm.
Cedric Hohnstadt completed a character design class from Stephen Silver at schoolism.com and has posted all his assignments, along with commentary on his blog, including some initial sketches for this character. The online classes don’t come cheap, but having met both Stephen Silver and Schoolism’s Bobby Chiu, I can tell you that you’d be hard pressed to find instructors more talented and passionate about pushing one’s limits.
Stephen’s Silver’s latest book of sketches, Stephen Silver’s Sketchbook is great fun. The book makes its official debut at the San Diego Comic Con this weekend (visit Stephen at booth H6). I just received my copy, and it’s a thing of beauty.
The book is cleverly designed to look like one of Stephen’s actual lunchtime sketchbooks loaded with character drawings, complete with spiral binding, and a thick cardboard backing. Unlike Stephen’s previous books, the pages of which often contained cut-up collages of various sketches from different sources, this latest book preserves Stephen’s sketchbook pages as is, and flipping through it actually looks and feels like you’re holding the real deal.
Stephen says that one of the reasons he preserved the pages in full was so he could share his creative process, the good along with the bad. But don’t listen to a word he says — there isn’t a bad drawing to be found in here. You can order the book at Stephen’s website for a cool $20.
At this year’s Reuben Awards I got the chance to chat briefly with Stephen Silver. Stephen gave the most wonderful inspirational seminar about his creative process, and nearly put everyone in the room to shame with the way he passionately spoke about drawing every day, experimenting with materials and styles, looking for inspiration, bettering one’s self… and did I mention drawing every day?
To get in on some of that inspiration I recommend hopping over to Stephen’s blog where he’s started up an inspirational podcast about drawing and the creative process called ArtCast (iTunes link).
Cedric Hohnstadt completed a character design class from Stephen Silver at 
