Ever the friend of our fellow cartoonists, the Theory Corner staff once again presents a tableau of thought-provoking models to draw. Let's start with Richard Widmark (above) who was a terrific psycho villain when he was young.
A skinny, giggly sadist with a weird hat, a low class dark shirt, and a loosely hanging raincoat...what's not to like? Widmark enjoys intimidating people, and even though he's a sociopath you grudgingly like him...well, in a way. He enjoys his work, and that makes him magnetic.
Basil Rathbone (above) was a great Sherlock Holmes, but he was an equally great villain. To judge from the picture above, he had it in him to play psycho-villains of the Widmark type. The look on his face seems to say, "Thanks for the favor, Pal! I come into your office to rub you out, and you save me the trouble by backing away, right out an open window. You even leave me your cigarettes!"
It's fun to draw women sitting (above) when they're wearing short skirts. Most women in this situation don't know what to do with their legs, and they try to hide them under purses and couch pillows. It's kinda cute.
There's one pose that's that all sitting women try to avoid, and the lady above has just taken it. It's the deadly fork pose where the legs descend in open parallel, and from an angle that makes them look oddly small and out of proportion. They look like marionette's legs.
I like the seam on the couch.
This wise woman (above) avoids the fork by taking a deliberately stylized, closed leg stance, with body thrust forward.
Poor Victor Mature got stuck with this puppet suit (above) in one of his films. Man, one faux pas like this undid all the image building cultivated in his last half dozen gladiator films.
In real life I love to draw conversations between two people who seem to come from different worlds (above). The clash of human types is one of my favorite themes.
6 comments:
Nice post, Eddie. Do you usually do these drawings in a sketchbook or some sort or just any piece of paper you can find, like a post it note? Anyways, thanks for the suggestions.
what do you think of tarantinos quote "I didnt go to film school I went to films" i have heard a little about you on this subject but not the quote
These are great, characters from yesteryear were so full of color and personality back then! Now a lot of actors are just playing variations of themselves on the big screen. Very sad stuff.
LOVE posts like this.
That last scan shows character actors Franklin Pangborn (left), perpetually prissy hotel manager, and Robert Dudley (right, as "the Wienie King") in The Palm Beach Story (1942), a brilliant and hilarious Preston Sturges screwball comedy classic, in case anyone's interested.
I say don't worry about the specific pose so much. Better to have a general idea, or at least for the way I'm thinking of it which may be more situation focused. Here's my idea for the woman on the couch. Her arms can just follow her leg's example, and she can move them off to the side on the couch. That will give her a theme of sorts which she can casually go in and out of. She can put her hands on her legs, skin on skin, or on her clothes, skin on cloth. I'd say use the hands on the legs for talking to people further away to lend intimacy and then go back to the clothes for people nearby.
Well that's a take off the top of my head.
Post a Comment