Last week I began taking a figure drawing class taught by Steve Carpenter. Steve is a phenomenally accomplished artist whose work has been shown in the U.S., France, Monaco, Switzerland, and too many other places to mention. He once worked as an illustrator for Disney; he spent several years as a freelance illustrator in Europe; and was once commissioned to create postage stamps for Monaco. His art has been shown in multiple countries; in June dozens of his paintings will be on display in Zurich at the Belltree Tower Gallery. He currently makes his home in Rochester, and we’re lucky to have him.

Today was my second class with Steve. Below is an image of one of the drawings I did this afternoon; you can click on it to see a larger version. I apologize for the fuzziness of it; I don’t have a scanner big enough for something this size, so I had to photograph it with my cell phone.

I was searching for some background material to help inform a post I’m going to write about the movie “The Dark Knight,” which I just watched on DVD on Friday. Strangely enough, as I was searching the LA Times Web site for an interview they did with director Christopher Nolan, I found this front-page photo of Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson Jr. Check out the insignia on the pocket of Jackson’s shirt.

I wonder if he’s wearing Batman Underroos as well.

I think I said this post will be about a cool outlining tool I’ve discovered but I decided instead to post some sketches. Hey, it’s my blog. Besides, I think I have at most about ten readers so I’m not in danger of disappointing vast swaths of the public.

The sketches below are called gestures. Gestures are quick drawings, often done in as little as one minute. They are intended not to capture a perfect likeness but instead to record the essence of a pose.

Gesture drawing is a great learning tool but I hated doing them when I was in college. I would always end up with page upon page of clumsy marks that added up to nothing. When I began attending Steve Carpenter’s weekly Figure Drawing Open Studio in Rochester, N.Y., I ran into the same brick wall trying to capture the one-minute poses that start off the session.

I decided to buckle down and practice gesture drawing at home. I start off every drawing session with a drill consisting of 20 one-minute gesture sketches. I don’t have access to live models (my girlfriend is not fond of modeling for me, even clothed; and my cats get up and move at inopportune times). I do, however, have many reference books filled with photos of models both nude and clothed and they’re useful enough for those times a model isn’t available.

The practice has paid off. My gesture drawings have definitely improved and I hope to utilize the knowledge gained to improve my finished drawings as well.

Here are a few samples of my most recent gestures (for those wondering, these were done with conté pencil on newsprint):

On Oct. 31 I announced a “Contest for Creative Types” with great fanfare. It was inspired by writer/illustrator Colleen Doran’s participation in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and by Laurie Sutton who posted a comment in Colleen’s blog suggesting that those of us who post there regularly could hold a contest in a similar vein. I volunteered to host it, and Colleen was kind enough to promote the idea in her own blog.

The rules were simple: pick a creative project, set a goal, and then check in weekly with your progress. Unfortunately, I made almost no progress for the first few weeks and then on Nov. 20 I was laid off from my job. The whole thing kinda went to hell from there.

In retrospect, aside from losing my job (which is no small thing, I assure you) the bigger issue for me was that I had set the wrong goal for myself. The objective of NaNoWriMo is for participants to write 50,000 words in one month, with little or no editing. The idea is to encourage people to stop procrastinating and start writing. I tried to apply that to drawing: I was going to complete four pages of “The Victory Streak” from start to finish.

The thing is, I have attention deficit disorder (ADD) and thoughts tend to come cascading out of my brain in a hurry. Excessive planning has never been my problem. It’s been the opposite. Like most ADD’ers, I’m impatient as hell. I want to immediately capture whatever’s in my head on a piece of paper. I’ve written many a story without doing an ounce of planning, and drawn many a comic-book page the same way. And I’ve run into the same roadblocks time and again as a result.

I don’t need to do more brain-dumps-on-the-page. I’m really, really good at that. I need to learn how to harness and structure all of these thoughts buzzing around in my brain, separating the good ones from the ones I should let go, and refining the good ones into something worth sharing.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on outlining the backstory for “The Victory Streak” and the first issue’s plot. I can’t share that outline with you, obviously. But I can share with you a cool tool I discovered that makes the outlining process easy and even fun. I’ll do that in my next post.

After that, I’ll be posting my first attempt to ink a penciled comic-book page (drawn by me, natch) with a brush. The page itself isn’t much to look at, but along with it I’ll be recounting my (mis)adventure in the land of comic-book inking. I think (or at least hope) it will prove entertaining.

I also have a few sketches I’ll share in yet another post. I’ve stepped back from penciling my comic-book for the moment in order to learn some of the fundamentals that are missing from my drawings. The results have been interesting. I may not be giving Michelangelo’s ghost reason to worry about his place in history, but I’m having fun and learning something.

So, that’s that. Next post will probably be tomorrow, because earlier this week I purchased “The Dark Knight” on DVD and am eager to finally watch the movie. Before you ask, no, I did not see it in a theater; and no, I have not been living under a rock all this time.

‘Night, all.

The international space station is having problems with a device designed to convert sweat and urine into drinkable water. Advice to the personnel on board the space station: if someone offers you a glass of lemonade, you should decline.

I may yet reach my goal of four finished comic-book pages by the end of the month, because as of today I have a lot more time to draw. This morning, my employer eliminated my entire division. More than 100 of my colleagues today joined me in adding to the swelling ranks of the nation’s unemployed. It would have made the TV news, had some kid not brought a gun to one of our local schools. Damn scene-stealer.

It could be worse. Federal regulations require employers to provide 60 days notice in the event of a plant closing or mass layoff. Therefore I will receieve my full salary and benefits through January 19. I will receive an additional four weeks of severance, and will be paid for seven days of unused vacation.

On my way home, my girlfriend suggested to me that if ever there was a time to devote myself to illustration, it’s now. While I doubt that in the next three months I can achieve professional-level proficiency, I can make some significant strides. I may even take advantage of the the extra time on my hands by taking an art class or two.

I was going to cancel the contest but then I thought, “Why?” Yes, I need to devote some time to searching for a new daytime gig. But there’s no way I can devote every waking minute to it. So it’s still on, baby. It’s SO on.

By the way, I hope everyone is approaching in this in the spirit I’d intended. It’s not a win-or-lose proposition. If you’re falling behind, don’t be afraid to say so. There’s no shame in that, y’know. If the contest spurs you to do more than you were doing before, I’d say it served its purpose well.

I hope to you will report your progress in this thread. I also hope you will share what’s worked for you, and what hasn’t. I think we can all benefit by learning from each other.

Huh. The Dow plunged below 8,000 today. Consumer prices and home starts are tanking. And Congress is refusing to bail out the big three automakers, which may be defensible on philosophical grounds but I shudder to think of what will happen to our economy if one of those corporate behemoths actually fails.

Perhaps I should slow down with the drawing. I may need to hold back some pencils so I can put them in a tin cup, and sell them on a busy street corner.

It’s Star Trek: The Next Generation like you’ve never seen it before. Just don’t play this at the office, or with little kids within earshot.

Prepare to bust a gut laughing.

Yesterday I posted an update about where I stand with respect to the “Contest for Creative Types,” only most of you probably didn’t see it because I removed it. Why? It was overly lengthy navel-gazing drivel. Frankly, where I stand can be summed up very succinctly: I’m crapping the bed.

See, I started by trying to re-write the script for the first issue of a comic-book entitled The Victory Streak. But I kept falling prey to the temptation to re-write as I went along. So I began losing ground in a big hurry.

Then I found a copy of the first draft of the script, and decided to draw the first four pages. Then I dug up the pencils for page one — which I did about a year or two ago — and inked them with a brush. Badly. Very badly. An untrained monkey could’ve done better.

So when I said I’d finished one page, that was factually correct but functionally incomplete. The complete picture: we’re 19 days into this contest and I have little to show for it.

So last night I taped a piece of artboard to my art table and said, “OK, in two hours I should be able to lay out this page.” But I couldn’t, because I kept erasing, and redrawing, and erasing, and redrawing… oh, and also, swearing and breaking pencils and pissing off my girlfriend who was sitting about five feet away using her PC.

Then I had an epiphany: I realized whatever I drew was going to suck… and that’s OK. Unless you’re a f—ing prodigy, you don’t get good until you get your bad drawings out of the way. May as well do that sooner rather than later.

I don’t know if I’m going to make the Nov. 30 deadline but I am going to complete four pages of this comic, like I said I would. I’m even going to post them in this blog and discuss them a bit for anyone who is interested.

And, hey, if I study and practice hard enough and consistently enough, after a few years people may look back at these drawings and say, “Man, that Bill Myers used to suck.” As in, y’know, past tense.

It’s time for our second contest update! You can check out the contest rules here if you missed them.

Here’s where we stand as of last week’s update:

Jeremy_A: Project = Novel (Forum Everyone); goal = 10,000 words per week; word count as of last week = ?

Colleen Doran: Project = Novel; goal = 50,000 words by end-of-month; word count as of last week = approx. 14,988

Sarah Beach: Project = Novel (Godiva); goal = 50,000 words by end-of-month; word count as of last week = approx. 6,654

Bill Mulligan: Project = Screenplay; goal = ?; word count as of last week = ?

Sean Scullion: Project = Screenplay (Triangle); goal = ?; word count as of last week = ?

Laurie Sutton: Project = Short Stories; goal = five 10,000-word stories by end-of-month; word count as of last week = ?

Me: Project = Comic-Book; goal = four finished pages by end-of-month; page count as of last week = 1

It looks like Colleen Doran is owning us, hands down. Also, we’re missing some updates! That’s right, I’m talkin’ to you, Laurie Sutton, Sean Scullion, and Jeremy_A. (I’m not picking on Bill Mulligan because he told me he has walking pneumonia and I don’t want to be responsible for driving him into an early grave. He’d never let me hear the end of it.)

My update will be forthcoming in a separate post on Saturday or Sunday. Why? First, I’d like to post some of what I’ve completed, and as I write this I’m at work (on my lunch break, before anyone asks!) and don’t have access to my artwork or my personal scanner. Second, Laurie Sutton convinced me that some of my thoughts around what I’m doing, the obstacles in my way and how I’m overcoming them would be of value to others. It didn’t take a lot of convincing, mind you. Getting me to talk is easy. Getting me to shut up is the tough part.

I look forward to updates from my fellow contestants.