Drawing techniques I learn my 8 year old daughter (genealogy #1)

Dutch version: see below
At what age can you learn (your) children how to draw?
For Josefien it all started when she was only a few months old.  I put her bouncing chair on my desk and she watched me drawing.
From the moment on that she could hold a pencil, she started drawing lines and curves on the pieces of paper that we gave her. 

When she went to nursery (before her 3 years), she already drew circles.  For us that was normal, but the nursery mom said it was the first child she saw doing that...

When she was 2 years and 9 months, she took the effort to finish a sketch that I was working on.  I wasn't angry at all. I had been sketching already for the whole day and arrived at the point where I was doubting my own qualities. Actually I was rather surprised that she wanted to continue my sketch.
I suppose the long green line represents the woman's hair.  She took some red (at that age the obvious colour to use)  to put an accent on the right nipple.
This is the stuff that you put on Facebook as a proud father :-).

First collaboration between father and daughter.

From that moment on it was very clear that, to say it with a Flemish proverb, "the apple doesn't fall far away from the tree" (it's running in the family)  :-).

When she went to school, at the age of 3, I always drew something on the paperwrap of her cookies in the morning.
One day, when I wasn't watching for 5 minutes, she took the black pencil and also drew something on my cookie's plasticwrap...

At the age of 3 years 3 months.  For the connaisseurs: it's a "frangipane".

Of course I ate the cookie, but I kept the plastic wrap :-).

From time to time, it happened that Josefien added some stuff to my drawings.  Fortunately, she always took draft-versions to put her drawings on it, like here with "Tattoo-girl".

Nowadays, Josefien is 8 years old.  She draws a lot of time, even in front of the television. She has more time to draw than I have, so our house is full of paper sheets with princesses, animals and other creatures (more or less definable) on it.

Bird, drawn by heart.  We used it as a our new years card for 2015...

I noticed that sometimes she's frustrated, because she wants to draw something that does not work out...  Personally I think these are important moments.  If children get too frustrated at this point, they might abandon drawing (and start doing other things, like binge-watching Cartoon Network or even worse playing games on tablets ;-) )...

So on these moments the teacher in me awakes at home and I try to explain her how to solve the drawing problem.

Now I come to the point of this blog post: which tricks work with an 8 year old (and which don't)?

• Drawing folds, e.g. on a dress.
  There are different types of folds, but I learnt her the easiest trick (very handy when drawing princesses).
  
   
  
  

  

  step 1: random curves

  
  

  

  step 2: vertical lines

  
  
  
  
  
  
  1. Draw some random curves
  2. Draw vertical lines that start at the beginning and the end of each curve
  3. Tadaa!
     
     Josefien immediately got away with this trick...
• Drawing a face in several positions (profile, frontal, ...)
  Trick:
  1. Put a cross on a face to place the eyes, nose and mouth correctly.
  2. Move the vertical line to the left to reposition the nose, eyes, etc...
  
  This trick is difficult, Josefien hasn't got this trick completely but I see that she applies some of these rules sometimes. 
  The problem with this trick is that superposition (e.g. nose over one cheek) and foreshortening  (e.g. of the mouth, eye) come in.

• Drawing old people and young people...
  just by lowering (for young people) or heighering (for old people) the position of the eyeline...
• Drawing lips
  This was an easy one.  But I showed her the trick for frontal and profile view only: use the letter "M" for the frontal upperlip, and a "U" for the lowerlip.  Lips in profile view have a ">"-shape.
  Lips in 3/4 view are more difficult to draw...
• Using reference images: putting some Google Images of wild boars in front of Josefien was enough to get her draw this one below.  So I guess working with reference pictures works at this age for some children.

So, now that we looked at what works with an 8 year old (interested in drawing), what doesn't work yet?

Perspective seems to be too difficult.  Aapparently it's too boring and too meticulous for this age.  I only learnt it at the age of 11 in school.  At that time I knew that  lines converge or diverge when you draw an object in space, but I never heard of vanishing points etc, until that first perspective lessons in school.


I'm very curious to see how Josefien will grow in her drawings.  Our youngest daughter Alice (4 years old) doesn't seem to have that interest in drawing; she's still in her abstract curly period and doesn't draw that much. Playmobil-toys and Lego seem to be far more intersting to her ;-).

Next time in genealogy: where are the artists in my family tree?

English version: see above
Vanaf welke leeftijd kan je je (eigen) kinderen leren tekenen?  Voor Josefien begon het allemaal toen ze slechts een paar maand oud was.  Ik zette haar "relax"-stoeltje op mijn bureau en zij keek naar mij terwijl ik tekende. Vanaf het moment dat ze een potlood kon vasthouden, begon ze lijnen en bogen te tekenen op de stukjes papier die we haar gaven.


Bij de opvangmoeder bleek ze al cirkels te kunnen tekenen.  Voor ons was dat normaal, maar de opvangmoeder zei dat Josefien het eerste kind was die ze zo'n dingen zag tekenen.  

Toen ze 2 jaar en 9 maand oud was, werkte ze ooit een van mijn tekeningen af.  (zonder mijn toestemming :-) ).  Ik was niet boos op haar, want ik had al de ganse dag zitten schetsen en was op het punt gekomen waarop ik niet meer tevreden was over mijn werk en  mijn eigen capaciteiten in twijfel aan het trekken was. Ik was eerder verbaasd dat Josefien de tekening wilde afwerken.

I veronderstel dat de lange groene lijn het haar van de vrouw voorstelt.  Josefien nam ook wat rood om de tepel te accentueren (voor haar een vanzelfsprekende kleur).
Dat zijn dan dingen die je als trotse vader op Facebook zet zeker?

Eerste samenwerking tussen vader en dochter.

Vanaf dat moment was het vrij duidelijk dat de appel niet ver van de boom zou vallen...

Een andere keer, toen ze al naar school ging, tekende ik altijd een figuurtje op het plastiekje rond haar koekjes. Toen ik ooit eens vijf minuten niet op haar lette, bleek ze zelf ook de alcoholstift genomen te hebben en ook mijn koekje versierd te hebben. 

Frangipane, verpakking door Josefien.

Het koekje heb ik opgegeten, het plastiekje heb ik bewaard.

Het gebeurde ondertussen al geregeld dat Josefien zaken toevoegde aan mijn tekeningen.  Gelukkig altijd op kladtekeningen, zoals hier bij "Tattoo-girl".

Nu is Josefien 8. Ze tekent heel veel, zelfs wanneer ze voor de tv zit.  Ze heeft meer tijd dan ik heb daarvoor, dus ligt het huis momenteel vol met papieren vol princessen, dieren en andere (ondefinieerbare) wezens.  

Vogel, uit het hoofd getekend.  Gebruikt voor ons nieuwjaarskaartje voor 2015.

Ik merk dat Josefine soms gefrustreerd raakt wanneer het niet lukt om een bepaald iets op papier te zetten. Persoonlijk denk ik dat dit vrij belangrijke momenten zijn: als kinderen gefrustreerd blijven, stoppen ze misschien met tekenen (en beginnen ze andere dingen te doen, zoals "binge-watching" naar Cartoon Network of nog erger spelletjes op tablets spelen ;-) ).

Op deze momenten komt de leerkracht in mij weer naar boven en probeer ik haar tekenproblemen op te lossen.

Daarmee kom ik (eindelijk) tot de essentie van deze blog: welke tekentruukjes kan je een 8-jarige leren?

• Vouwen tekenen, bijvoorbeeld op een jurk.
  De gemakkelijkste truuk, handig wanneer je veel princessen tekent:
  
  
  
  

  

  random curves

  

  vertikale lijnen trekken

  1. Teken random curves.
  2. Trek vanuit die curves lijnen naar boven.
  3. Tadaa!
     
     Josefien had deze truuk onmiddellijk beet.
     
• Een gezicht tekenen vanuit verschillende hoeken (profiel, frontaal, ...)
  Truuk:
  1.Teken een kruis op een gezicht om de ogen, neus en mond correct te plaatsen (de klassieke proporties indachtig).
  2. Verplaats eventueel de vertikale lijn om ogen en neus opnieuw te plaatsen.
  
  Deze truuk had Josefien nog niet volledig beet, soms past ze echter wel de kruis-truuk toe en klopt het min of meer.

• Jonge en oude mensen tekenen
  Truuk: gewoon de ooglijn laten zakken (voor jongeren mensen) of laten stijgen (voor oudere mensen)
  
• Lippen tekenen
  Dit bleek een makkie.  Ik toonde Josefien dat je de letter "M" moet gebruiken als basisfiguur voor de bovenlip, en een uitgerekte "U" voor de onderlip.  In profiel hebben lippen dan weer een ">"-vorm.
  Lippen in 3/4e zicht zijn dan weer wat moeilijker om te tekenen. 
  
• Referentiebeelden gebruiken: wat everzwijnen opduikelen in Google Images was voor Josefien genoeg om deze tekening te maken.  Werken op basis van referentiemateriaal werkt dus alleszins al voor sommige kinderen op die leeftijd; natekenen blijkbaar ook. 

We hebben nu gekeken welke truukjes al werken voor een 8-jarige, maar zijn er ook truukjes die ni twerken?
Perspectief blijkt toch te moeilijk te zijn.  Het is te saai en te precies om leuk te blijven.  Zelf leerde ik dit als 11-jarige op school (bij meester Walter :-) ).  Ik wist toen wel al dat lijnen convergeren of divergeren in perspectief, maar van vluchtpunten had ik tot die eerste perspectiefles nog nooit gehoord.

Ik ben benieuwd om te zien hoe Josefien zal evolueren in haar tekeningen.  Onze jongste dochter Alice (4 jaar oud) lijkt minder geïnteresseerd te zijn in tekenen, ze zit nog in haar abstracte krullenperiode. Playmobil en Lego blijven veel interessanter te zijn voor haar...


Volgende keer: waar zitten de artisten in de stamboom?

Comic artists that I admire #2: Thierry Ségur

Thierry Ségur is another (French) artist that I admire very much.  Without his work, I wouldn't have made the transition from children comics to adult comics (or BD - Bandes Dessinées as they call them in France).  By shifting to comics for a more mature audience, I understood that comics are more than just big-nosed funny characters.
So without Ségur's work, I would have probably lost my interest in drawing.  At a certain age, playing guitar, being cool and impressing girls (well at least in my case ;-) ) becomes more interesting  than drawing comics, which seems a nerdish hobby at that age.  

But that dark scenario did not happen :-).  So, why did I like Ségur's work?

Reading comics in the nineties
It all begin at a new years eve somewhere in the beginning of the nineties, when we were visiting my aunt and uncle and I was browsing through the new comics that my older cousin bought.

Among those comics was a particular case, titled "De legende van de dorre gewesten" (the legend of the droughty countries).  Below you see the original French cover, which actually refers to "forgotten countries".

Why was this album so different for me
I was 14 years old at that time, and this album was quite different from what I had seen or read before:

• It was hard cover, and larger than A4.  Flemisch comics at that time were on a smaller and softcover format.  So Ségur's work looked more precious (or expensive).
• Flemish comics had a flat colouring at that time.  Ségur's work was probably watercolor with other media.  Actually this was the first time I saw painted comics.
• Ségur doesn't draw in a caricatural of realistic style, but somewhere between. At that time I only knew funny comics like Spirou (Robbedoes), les Tuniques Bleues (Blauwbloezen) or  more realistic stuff like "De Rode Ridder" (the red knight).
• The story was pure fantasy.  At that time, fantasy wasn't that mainstream as nowaday.
• The charactersmade a psychological evolution through  the story, which was something new for me.
• The visual language was new to me, with the use of movie techniques like zooming, panning, ... 

Someone who read French adult comics in the seventies must have  been already familiar with all this stuff, but in the Dutch-speaking market this was all fairly new.

If this album would have been published right now, it wouldn't be so unique anymore, except maybe for the authentic painted style that Ségur uses.

A first look at the book
Just by opening the book, the reader dove into the world that Ségur created.  The first spread that is glued to the hardcover, was a gigantic close-up from one of the most impressive images from the book:   Hürl the thunderknight making his entry among a raging storm of flashlights...
Maybe not that impressive here on screen, but on a 50x35cm format: wow!

Ségur's drawing style
As already told, Ségurs work was the first painted comic that I saw.  I suppose it's mainly watercolor (aquarelle).  In the first album, the colours are all quite bright and vivid, just like the atmosphere of the story itself.  When the story evolves, in the second and third album, the colors are scaled down and Ségur uses more desaturised (greyish) colours, which fit perfect with the darker atmosphere in the third part.

The opening page (click to zoom)

Also his linework evoled from thicker in the first album, to thinner in the third.

Page from the third album.

My personal "Aha-erlebnis" (wow-moment) was that Ségur's drawing showed me that a good drawing is actually a flat representation of a 3D-object.  You always end up with a line-drawing, but you should start by thinking about the three-dimensional form.   Now that's common knowledge for me, but at that time it was new for me.  I see this also  when I teach my illustration courses: when you learn your students about perspective and dimensionality,   they start making huge progressions.
I think that perspective and dimensionality are  really essential for anyone who wants to draw stuff  by heart, without reference.

Another visual representation of fantasy
Ségur's work was one of the earlier fantasy-comics.  You can still see it when you look at how the fantasy-world was conceived: plants, rocks, etcetera are conceived quite differently from what you see in regular fantasy nowadays.

 

Click to zoom.

 

Click to zoom.

There are two reasons why Ségur's way of visual representation is different:

Firstly, the global influence of internet makes that nowadaysthere is a certain canon of how fantasy should look like.  Orks, elves, etc. have a general look, as if there is a standard, or a canon about it.    Especially since Lord of the Rings, fantasy has been streamlined into a certain visual style.  Ségur made his work before the internet really boosted (end of the eighties), and had to make up his world by himself, without much help or influence from others.

Secondly, Ségur is French.  Frenchmen are a bit more chauvinist when it comes to accept influences from other countries/cultures. 
In the seventies and maybe still the eighties France was even quite protectionistic towards its own cultural production. I believe that in that time (and maybe still now for certain radio or television networks) there was a quotum on the minimum amount of French songs that should be played...
This typical French mentality made that French fantasy and science-fiction evoled a bit more independent than in countries where the American influence was bigger.
French science fiction style was actually so apart from the American style, that in the seventiefrench SF series Valerian (by Mezières) actually influenced Star Wars (the design of Han Solo's spaceship, and even Darth Vader). Other authors like Moebius made designs for movies like Twelve Monkeys (that's in the mid-nineties). For Luc Bessons's "Fifth Element" (with Bruce Willis) both Mezières and Moebius developed the layout of the movie (e.g. the flying cabs).
So the American influence on French artists was at that time quite marginal, which resulted for the French comics in more original storylines and graphic design. 
Of course, nowadays French SF and fantasy is much less original than it was back in the seventies and eighties.

Of course now it seems that only Ségur worked on these albums, but the script was written by  Chevalier.  He and Ségur knew eachother through the world of Role Playing Games.  Actually there has been made an RPG from  "La légende..." later on. I do not know what influence Chevalier had on the visual style of the albums...

The story itself.

The story itself was written by Chevalier, and was one of the very first French fantasy albums (even before "The cristal sword"). "Editions Delcourt" published the albums as one of the very first fantasy series. Nowadays publishers like Delcourt and especially Soleil are publishing too much fantasy and SF; in general there is even an overproduction of comics in France (every day 6 new comics are published).
But in those days, "La légende..." was unique and trendsetting. If "La légende" was published in 2015 instead of of the late eighties, I do not know if the albums would still stand out in a shop among all the other new albums...

Cover for the second album.

In the story itself, 3 dwarfs have to fullfill a quest: finding their king.  That starting point is used a lot in fantasy.  For this purpose, they make a fellowship (sounds also very familiar) but not in the same way as it happens in "The fellowship of the Ring" (LOTR).  The three dwarfs engage Firfin, a thief from the Lïn-people, and the barbaric warrior Morkaï.


By the end of the first album, the fellowship breaks up after an attack of some kind of orks (just like in LOTR), but then the story takes another lead in the next two albums, when it turns out that the quest is manipulated by an old evil forcen and it seems that nobody can trust his friends or even family anymore...


The story consists of three albums.  The second sold at the time 45,000 copies, a huge succes for a French fantasy series in those days.

It took some years before the third part was published, because Ségur did some storywork for the movie "Trooper" by Christophe Gans.

The three albums

Ségur after this story

Thierry Ségur didn't make much comics after "La légende".  He did more illustrationwork and  some storyboarding for movies, like "Le pacte des Loups".
"Le roi des méduses" (the King of the jellyfish) was published a few years after "La légende", and was drawn in his particular style, but the story was quite complicated (it took me a while before I read the whole story). "Le roi des méduses", scripted by Igor Szalewa. Other work he did are Krok le Bô (1990), also scripted by Chevalier.  It didn't find a translation of that in Dutch so I haven't read it yet (nor have I found the original version in French).

Some years ago, there were plans for a sequel to "La légende...", but eventually the project was aborted.  


Getting the albums
You can still get the albums in French language; if you're looking for a Dutch version you should check out the second-hand comic shops, where they can still be found.  Not because they didn't sell well, but because the Flemish publisher printed too much copies at the time.



All images: copyright Ségur/Chevalier.

Click  here to see the other comic artist that I admire. 

Comic artists that I admire...

On this blog,  I will discuss some comic artists that I appreciate very much.  Their talents have been (or still are) an inspiration for me. That's why I want to put them in the spotlight for you, the blogreader that might not know them (especially if you're not from Belgium or France).

So here are the artists that are worth to check out:

Rosinski - read the article here

Thorgal by Rosinski

Dave Gibbons

Watchmen by Gibbons

Karel Biddeloo

The Red Knight by Karel Biddeloo

Philippe Delaby

Laments of the lost Moors (Complainte des Landes Perdues) by Delaby

Steven Dupré

Illustration by Steven Dupré

Hans Kresse

Illustration by Hans Kresse

Beatrice Tillier - read the article here

Le Bois des Vièrges (Virgin's Wood) by Tillier

Thierry Ségur - read the article here

"Légendes des contrées oubliées" (Legend of the forgotten countries)  by Ségur

James Gurney

Dinotopia by Gurney

Jean Giraud/Moebius

Blueberry by Giraud

In the following blog posts, you'll get a chance to meet them and their work.  


Maybe you wonder why most of these artists are less known outside Belgium and France?

Well actually Belgium and France have another "comic culture" than most other contries.

American comics and cartoons (action heroes and Disney-likes) are very popular in the whole world. 

But Belgium (in the fifties and sixties) and France (from the seventies on) developed their own way of comics, like Tintin (1930), Spirou (1939), Lucky Luke (1940's), Astérix (1959), The Smurfs (1950's), Suske en Wiske (1940's). I'm sure some of these names ring a bell :-).




These local comics have always been more popular than American import. Fact: any Disney-marketeer knows where Belgium lies, because it's the country where Disney-stuff has the most difficulties to penetrate the market and has the lowest sales-figures... 
Scandinavia for example, on the other hand, had a smaller local comic production in the past.  That market there has been heavy influenced by action heroes and the Disney-characters.

Photo credits: I took the pictures from Internet.  I do not own the copyright.  If you do a Google Image Search for the pictures, you'll find the rightfull owners. That's all for the legal stuff :-).