some more Russell Mussell

A few months ago on this blog I posted some artwork for a new character I just designed called Russell Mussell.  I only had that one drawing of him at the time.  Well, since I've been somewhat laid off from my day job (because of this big big virus), I've had time to draw lots more of him.  It's been an intense labour of love of course and lots of fun.  Moreso than just the act of drawing being fun, it's the discoveries that an artist makes along the way that are just as fun.  Here's one such discovery I have made in drawing this character:

First I'll tell you a bit about Russell's design.  His head has no shape really.  I start by simply drawing two eyes and a crooked smile. Then I draw everything else around that.  He does tend to look somewhat flat when rendered this way, mostly in the front view.  However, I found that I can easily give him the illusion of a 3rd dimension by simply drawing his eyes in perspective.  As you can see, the eye closest to us is bigger than the farther one, thus the perspective is achieved.

I'm not the first to discover this of course and I'm not claiming to either.  Way back in the late '40's/early '50's many animation studios were experimenting with a graphically flat design in their cartoons.  They absolutely achieved that same illusion with their flat designs and many of the results were pretty cool.

I'm very proud of myself for rediscovering nitrogen in a way and applying that to what I'm drawing now.  I hope I can have much more drawings of Russell Mussell done very soon.