Brother Bear 2

Of course , there had been many Disney ( and other cartoon ) - Bears already. I wanted to stay away from them as far as possible...





So I started my sketches based on this little toy, which I had picked up in a monastry outside moscow and which I always had loved for it's nice proportions. Now, I finally knew, why I had bought it...



And of course BART THE BEAR was a great inspiration, I watched and studied a lot of his movies and I was lucky to even find a documentary from National Geographic on him, what a great guy, rest in peace, Bart....





Look at the size of this guy, the head and the paw on the shoulder,the sheer "presence" of this wonderful creature, you easily forget this if your used to - and think in terms of- cartoon bears.I also visited the two kodiaks in the Hamburg zoo, and time and time again, my first thought was ;"M>y god, they are huge!" I wanted to capture this feeling by all means. But how do you draw "size" and "weight", without having a chance to give a relation on the same sheet , use an upshot camera-angle or just a part of the body ??? If you gotta show the whole body, even a whale looks like a herring.



I found the lower lip very helpful for this purpose, it always hangs down, makes a great tool for a follow thru , always looks kinda numb and there's spit and saliver dropping from it. It gives a great feel of size and weight to the drawing.





These above sketches were done with exactly this purpose. And after the bears went through the giftet hands of Rune Bennicke and all the other guys at Disney's , they looked really good...




.....more to come