Learning to Draw Kids

Kids are hard to draw. When you're little, you mostly draw grown up people because that's your focus. At least it was for me. In an effort to express emotions to the fullest, you slather on the crinkles and creases in faces, regardless of what muscles and tendons might actually be working under the surface. And so, when you draw children and babies from that frame of mind, they tend to look like horribly shrunken little mutant adults. It's difficult to steer away from, but since my next project is likely to be full of kiddos, I'm trying to push myself beyond what I think looks right and naturalistic in an effort to capture those anatomical tags that yell, "HEY! I'm a kid!!!"

Today, that tag is the enlarged alien forehead. Not all of them have it, but it does say kid to me. Unwieldy, unbalanced, more cute. I noticed it a couple of days ago on Sarah's favorite mug- Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear are doing somersaults across a field with the rest of their crew, and Christopher's forehead looks like it's going trap him in a perpetual, tumbling spiral from sheer momentum.

Now for expressions minus the crinkles.