Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Line of Action

I'm not going to write a whole treatise on the "line of action" because the veteran Disney animator Preston Blair already did.

From his book Animation: Learn How to Draw Animated Cartoons (How to Draw Series 26), which has been republished as Cartoon Animation .
You can also find versions of it online.

at

12 comments:

  1. AmeliaSeptember 4, 2012 at 11:33 AM

    I completely forgot that I have a copy of this book but now that you mention it, I see it up there on the top shelf! I'm glad you highlighted it. It's got some really good stuff in it . . . the "How to Draw a Cute Bunny" part isn't so helpful to me but the loosening exercises and form-construction stuff are solid. I don't do much cartooning at all but there are plenty of good ideas that translate to drawing figures from the imagination in any style.

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  2. Janet OliverSeptember 4, 2012 at 11:44 AM

    Mr. Gurney, you have become my Number One art resource! Thank you for this post, and links!

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  3. Tom HartSeptember 4, 2012 at 12:01 PM

    This is one of my favorite and most helpful tools for starting a drawing involving any sort of figure. Even for "static" figure studies, establishing the line of "action" (or flow) always provides a solid basis to build on.

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  4. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2012 at 12:28 PM

    This works well for cartoons, but does it apply when your drawing realistic figures?

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  5. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2012 at 2:33 PM

    Mr. Gurney, thank you for your time and energy put into this blog. I am a student studying illustration and find many helpful resources and ideas from your blog. Also I have always been a huge fan of Dynotopia.

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  6. K_tigressSeptember 4, 2012 at 5:47 PM

    Always love that book. Great resource and it helps with remembering to keep it loose.

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  7. K_tigressSeptember 4, 2012 at 5:50 PM

    "This works well for cartoons, but does it apply when your drawing realistic figures?"

    In a way, yes. ;)

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  8. UnknownSeptember 4, 2012 at 5:53 PM

    I still have this book. My parents bought it for me when I was quite young. I copied many of the cartoons from it so many years ago.

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  9. James GurneySeptember 4, 2012 at 6:25 PM

    Anonymous and Tigress. Yes, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solomon_Samson_and_Delilah.jpg

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  10. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2012 at 7:27 PM

    Got this book when I was a kid as a gift from my parents - nearly forgot I had it! The hours of fun I had with this...

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  11. K_tigressSeptember 4, 2012 at 11:53 PM

    Here's a link to some of the lessons from the PB book that I found a number of years ago.
    http://cdrrhq.ru/lessons/preston/main.htm

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  12. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2012 at 1:53 AM

    Thanks for your response.

    I think henrich kley is a great artist to look at for this type of thing. His line of action is a bit less exaggerated than blairs though.

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