Naughty Chopper (Chop! Chop!)

At draw night this week I decided to focus on faster, sketchier figures again. The first page began with the eye in the lower corner, and then I started loosely drawing an image of Spidey in my head, focusing on his wirey-yet-muscley look. It was all over the place, so I tried again without erasing or doubling up lines to define line weight or commit to shapes. But I didn't care if it actually ended up Spidey and didn't know where I was going with it, so I just made it a nobody. But he still had his head intact. The rest were just scribbles, but I rather liked the scribble in the top-left, where I wanted to draw someone grabbing his own feet. I'm sure it's got messy bits in there, but for a quick sketch I thought it looked pretty nice. Jon Diesta was talking about some anatomy lessons he had picked up on from a fellow artists, and feeling jealous that I had nothing to teach, I showed Jon the anatomy of a flower while drawing one behind the squatting fella.

Realizing I had just did yet another page of man figures, I decided to do a page of ladies. Drawing ladies is really fun because of all the different shapes and sizes that are still in the beautiful form range, and I love the way their hips work; I really have no idea why I don't doodle them more often, whether its the fact that everyone always doodles ladies, or because few of the superhero books I followed as a kid had women as the lead hero. Either way, it's a bit of sadness. But I digress.

I started with the top sitting lady, then the standing lady, then the back-scratching lady, whose right arm sticks out to me as not a good headrest at the moment, and then I thought of the guy grabbing his feet and wanted a female version of it, so I did a nude figure putting on her shoe. That was fun. Then I looked over at what Jon was doing -- a much larger female figure -- that was looking really cool, so I drew a fan (like his figure had), and then started fronting:

"My girl has a fan, so now what? Huh? Huh?"
"Now she needs a sword," Jon replies.
"Now mine has a sword. What now?"
Tom jumps in with, "Shoes. Made of goat."
"Now she has goat shoes! What up?"
"She needs a HairdoodZ," says Jon.
"And a monkey-hat," interjects Tom.
After scribbling, I announce, "She has a monk HairdoodZ with a monkey-hat. Unnh!"
"Mine is going to have a print on her clothes," announces Jon.
I'm screwed, I think. "Dammit, she has no clothes! Maybe I can do a tattoo..."

So I finished up with the tattoo and was pleased enough to note all of the contributions everyone made to the drawing. Continuing with figures, I added the bottom sitting girl, and ended with the girl in the upper-left corner. By the time I finished her body, I didn't want to draw her head, so I just moved it to the side and added a "CHOP!" All of a sudden, I worried it would come across as a sexist chop, so I went back to the first drawing and took off the head of the male figure there, too. And since I had a culprit with a sword, I decided to call her design The Chopper's Costume.

The last page was me drawing lots of legs and feet, just trying to impart some thoughts about the way I draw feet to Jon. I thought I'd include it, in case someone, somehow, found a way to derive information from it.