On Understanding the Works of Other Artists

A Thelwell cartoon I chose to study

My freehand copy, made with an eye towards understanding Thelwell's line work.

One of the most challenging things about drawing or painting in another artist's style, is finding the correct rhythm of the artwork. For example, I am very well-versed in pen & ink. However, every masterful artist does a pen & ink drawing a little bit differently. In order to study the work of another artist, one must try to understand how they placed their lines and other marks on the page. It's an interesting challenge, and greatly expanding of your skill set. By expanding your artistic viewpoint you can also enhance your artistic voice, making it more educated and facile. At least, that's the way it works for me. ;-)

Horse Life 18

Horse Life 18 is here! Finally. Yay!

This cartoon is part of an on-going series I’m calling “Rules of the Road,”  the full title of which is “Rules of the Road: A Standard Guide to Riding.”  I’m having a lot of fun with these. The text is all traditional, straight out of riding manuals from the 1970’s and before. The advice given is all good and proper BUT making it work for you as a rider is another thing entirely. It all looks good on paper but when you’re out there with your pony or horse, all bets are usually off! After more than 40 years as a rider, I know what I’m talking about. Believe me! All the same, the fun is in the joke of it. We all want to be Velvet Brown from “National Velvet” and we all end up being characters from Thelwell cartoons instead. Although it wasn’t always true, at this point I’ve learned to see the humor in it and appreciate the not-so-subtle joke. ;-)

Click HERE to see Horse Life 18 on my website.

How To Draw Ponies by Thelwell

How To Draw Ponies hardback book (front cover)

“In the course of my work as an illustrator and cartoonist, I have drawn almost every subject under the sun at one time or another, or so it seems to me….But the most frequent question is ‘How do you draw those ponies?’ Why ponies should be singled out in this way, I am not sure, and the simple, truthful answer ‘The same way that I draw anything else’ does not seem to satisfy anyone.”

Thus begins the introduction to How To Draw Ponies by Thelwell published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd., 1982.

How To Draw Ponies hardback book (back cover)

I have been a fan of Thelwell since my parents bought me Thelwell’s Horse Box when I was a little girl. Like many girls, I have been horse-crazy for most of my life. I have also been drawing horses for as long as I can remember. I still have scraps of paper from high school covered in sketches of ponies, fancy jumpers, and horses of all kinds.

I became aware of How To Draw Ponies recently after stumbling across of few poor scans of some of the pages on the Internet. To my amazement, I noticed that the text from one wobbly image from one half page from somewhere in this book was saying something about drawing horses that I had never heard before. That got my attention. When I looked into it further I realized that this page was from a drawing book written by Norman Thelwell. Wow! I just had to have it for my library. Long out of print and not in US libraries, How To Draw Ponies, proved an expensive book to acquire but well worth the effort.  

Unlike a more modern “How-To” art book, How To Draw Ponies is written to demand a rather higher level of consideration from the reader. It encourages a spirit of artistic experimentation that can appeal to a wide variety of readers from little kids to artists like myself (who are still kids at heart anyway.)

How To Draw Ponies interior page

How To Draw Ponies is filled with theories and opinions by Thelwell about how he went about drawing his ponies and other subjects. It covers topics ranging from the anatomy and structure of ponies, the basic shapes that make up a Thelwell pony and rider, the movement of the pony, expressions of his face and tail, drawing tools, the use of light and shadow, and the development of the cartoon from sketch to final. And all in less than 60 pages! It was nice to read a book that, although meant for children, is also quite useful for adults. As an added bonus it’s also filled with Thelwell illustrations that are particular to this little book.

How To Draw Ponies is not one of those “follow-along-with-me” art books that we are so familiar with today. Instead, it lays out Thelwell’s theories and thoughts on drawing and gives readers tools to play with. It encourages you to get out there and get some graphite and ink on your hands. It doesn’t hold your hand as much as encourage you to adventure.

“Come on everyone, let’s draw!” it tells you.

That’s just what I’m going to do this afternoon.

Delay in Horse Life leads to doodling

"It's been a long week!"

For the past week I having been working hard to finish up some commissioned illustrations. Of course, this required me to put all non-paid art on temporary hold. Hence the lack of appearance of Horse Life this week. It will be back, and soon, but not for a few more days.

Last night, in a late night stupor of being awake but not able to do any more “official” artwork,” I started doodling notes for future Horse Life comics. Truly, it’s a case of too much information! I have anecdotes that could keep me busy for years! *chuckle* I am also working on finding my stride as far as the characterizations for the comic. Studying established and popular cartoonists like Norman Thelwell and Charles M. Schulz, (creator of “Peanuts”) is both enlightening and helpful. As I sketch, I learn and process. Eventually, I will find my own stride, just as they did.

In that spirit, here are three of my pony sketches from last night when everything seemed “up in the air!.” ;-)

"Reaching new heights"

"The Star Player"

"Putting on Airs"

Not all Noodler’s Flex Pens…

..are created alike, apparently. I have recently discovered this fact. I was aware that the original feeds for the Noodler’s Flex Pens were all handmade, which is why the originals came out in such small batches. The newest pens have machined feeds and so are available in much larger batches.

The two Flex Pens from my original purchase remain the best of the six I now own. I assume that both of these pens have the handmade feeds. The ones I have bought since have all been spotty in their quality. Two have them have been good, one iffy, and one not good at all. In a recent post I complained about getting my flex pen in the "Arizona" color to work well with my new Diamine Sepia ink. This pen has never performed well for me, it’s too hard to flex and the ink just doesn’t flow quite “right” through it.

Yesterday, when I saw a black Noodler’s Flex Pen at the University Bookstore in Seattle, I tried it out, hoping that it had a good feed. It felt quite good and I bought it immediately. Although many people were very excited when these new black versions which came out recently, I hadn’t really thought about getting a black Flex Pen. Frankly, I prefer the colors (see this post). But the feel of the pen is the more important thing, as it’s the smoothness of the line that makes ink work really enjoyable for me. It’s hard to find these pens in physical stores to try out. They are most easy to find online, but then you can't try them before you buy. I felt lucky to get my chance to try one out yesterday.

I gave my new Noodler's black Flex Pen a proper test run when I got home..

When I got it home I immediately filled it with Diamine Sepia ink and gave it a proper test run. Here is the result. I feel pretty good about this new pen. I think it’s going to be a good drawing pen for me (even though it doesn’t match the ink that’s in it!) Full steam ahead now for more drawings in Sepia ink!

New Brush Pens!

Kinokuniya purchases

Yesterday, on my way to massage a few horses at the racetrack (yes, I do that too!), I stopped at Kinokuniya Bookstore (heaven!) in downtown Seattle and took a good look at their brush pens. I have been doing some tests of the Zebra Disposable Brush Sign Pens and liked them, but of course, there’s always room for a more perfect pen. So…on to Kinokuniya. They had a lovely selection, luckily with testers all arranged neatly as I couldn’t read a word on the labels except for Pentel, Pilot, etc… I tried them all out and picked out three, which I needed to research when I got home to find out what I had bought!

Apparently, I bought a Pilot Pocket Brush – Hard, a Pilot Double-Sided Brush Pen, and an unknown Pentel grey brush pen. It’s funny that I can’t figure out what the third pen is exactly. I have been looking on the web and can find nothing that looks just the same. If any of you know what this one is, please tell me. I am curious!

Brush Pens - (from left to right) Zebra Disposable Brush Pen Fine, Zebra Disposable Brush Pen Superfine,
Pilot Double-Sided Brush Pen, Pilot Pocket Brush - Hard, Pentel unknown grey brush pen.

Here are my pen tests. All of the brush pens seemed quite good. The Pilot Pocket Brush is perhaps the best of them and it pairs nicely with my Noodler’s Flex pen. (I like creating matched pairs of pen and brush. In my next post, when I talk about my new brown inks, I’ll mention this again.) For the test I also added my Pitt Design Pens (Brush and “S”) to round out the field. I’ve been using the Pitt brush pens for some time now, but they may have just had their spot taken by the Pilot Pocket Brush. It’s a darker black and really is quite enjoyable to use.

Brush pen tests

As another interesting note, today I proved to myself that Thelwell MUST HAVE used both pen and brush in his cartoons. Some of the effects he achieved could only have been gotten this way.

Pentel Pocket Brush and Noodler's Flex pen a great combination!

All my ink tests were done in a Bee Pen Sketcher’s pad.

And don't forget to look into the corners

Norman Thelwell (1923- 2004) was a most remarkable cartoonist. Best known for his "Thelwell Ponies," it seemed he could draw nearly anything and make it funny. From a horseman's perspective it was clear that he knew the horse world very, very well. With a short series of pen strokes he could make a horse look guilty, or happy, or very, very angry. His detail and gesture work were incredibly expressive. 

Tonight, while studying a few of his drawings, I noticed a particular sequence of pages in his book, "Thelwell's Riding Academy (1965). I had looked at these pages many times before, but this was the first time I took a really close look at the background figures that no one ever looks at. The closer I looked, the more impressed I got. Check this out…

For me this was a wonderful lesson. Leave out the detail if you must, but use the right gestures. We all know them and have seen them a thousand times in real life. The trick, of which Thelwell was a master, is to add just enough detail to make your point. But not too much or everything gets muddied and the impact is lost. :-)