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Last week I wrote that animated films are  corporate artwork, polished and refined by so many committees that it is often difficult to find the fingerprints of any individual artist in the end product. But sometimes an individual artist's voice is so powerful that it survives the corporate de-flavorizing machine.  We can still see the impact of Eyvind Earle 's contribution to the film Sleeping Beauty or Mary Blair 's contribution to films such as Make Mine Music and Alice in Wonderland -- films that ended up far better off because of distinctive individual voices. One of the very few artists working in the field today with that kind of visual strength is the brilliant Carter Goodrich . When I began clipping his work from magazines, I didn't know his name but his distinctive style was easy to recognize.   A common scene presented in an innovative way  This marvelous bear foretells characters in the film, Brave I later learned Goodrich's name from his New York...

My head drawing class begins Monday July 9, 7-10pm. To enroll contact The Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art (click here for more info), (877) MY-LAAFA (695-2232). Sure, the class will heavily cover structure and rendering (in charcoal) but in the age of instant digital photography our work needs more than just mindless rendering, so we'll also talk about giving portraits a reason to live through design. In this lay-in example, I'm carefully finding long lines and shapes that will give the portrait strength and visual interest. The long line that connects the background to the figure helps make the whole image cohesive and creates a repetition of the triangle shape to give a sense of meaningful relationships between the parts.