After a two year Hiatus from drawing I picked it up again this Christmas. Had some time to spend in a sofa, it is relaxing and I found out I have a good hand for it already. It stuck. I began trying to draw Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Even though the style is very simple yet elegant, it was not as easy to draw as I hoped. Proportions are a big part of drawing. Get them wrong and your drawing looks completely awful. Hit it right and you suddenly look like a skilled artist.
My first tries came out fair, but I realised that to nail this I needed some help. Luckily one of my former colleagues hooked me up with a professional artist who had done character animation some years ago. She agreed to sit with me and teach some fundamental drawing techniques. Stuff that you can find on the net in buckets, but I needed some real trainer to get me running.
She taught me to draw a circle and cross lines on it as if it were a 3d object. Then you add your nose, eyes on the lines, ears, mouth, shape of the head. Do it in a very gentle hand, “a child’s touch” she called it.
When you see the rough shape of your character, your start adding facial traits and eyes. Everything is very well documented and illustrated on Cartoon Fundamentals. I was taught the same technique (as it is universal) as we sat in their apartment on a cold January afternoon. I took the lesson home with me and immediately started drawing characters. And it really worked!
I immediately saw a jump in my abilities by simply following the steps I was taught by a pro. I have then spent about 3 weeks doing evening drawing sessions on about 1 hour, mostly drawing various characters from Morris’ Lucky Luke. The man really had an eye for characters, some of them are incredible pieces of art.
My next step is to redo the tutorial from Cartoon Fundamentals and try to get my own facial expressions down on paper.

Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw a Cartoon Face Correctly