My coworker was envious of the self-caricature on my edit room door, so I left this for him tonight. I’ll let you know if he’s still speaking to me.

This week’s drawing class focused on heads. It really helped to have a model with a short haircut. She has a raccoon-eye because I had to reposition it slightly, and I’m still not swift enough to carry white-out with me.

Appropriately enough, it was probably my last class before I head off to Florence to paint a portrait in a 2-week workshop at the Angel Art Academy. Clearly I’m in a little over my head (hmm), but I’ll have a full week to do the initial drawing, rather than 20 minutes. If I can’t nail a drawing in that amount of time…well, who cares, I’ll be in friggin’ Italy eating everything in sight.

The novelty of painting with the iPad still hasn’t worn off for me. Not a very interesting composition; I got bored and forewent adding people (although this has the feel of an animation background).

I wonder what would happen if, during my painting class in Florence, I decided to go rogue and just start painting cartoon cows.

“You got my tuition, I’ll paint what I want! You don’t know me! You don’t know me!”

Twice a week, Matt Kohr of CtrlPaint.com posts short tutorials and tips that are helpful for both analog and digital artists. Today’s sketch is based on one of his recent videos, in whic he suggests doing gesture drawings from movie freeze frames. You can use these gestures as practice, or as future reference for your own characters.

Here I used Charles Foster Kane going bananas over a girl or a sled or something.