I’m getting better at forcing myself to sketch little gesture drawings while I’m out and about. Here are a few people in the park after today’s jog.

And here’s a gesture drawing as a proto-animation:

Meet my oldest fans, Nana and Tata. No, really, they’re 193!

And believe it or not, I did find a photo of Tata smiling about that big:

Gearing up for my figure drawing class in a couple weeks, using virtual models from pixelovely.com. Apparently most life drawing sessions start out with a few very quick poses (gesture drawings), followed by progressively longer poses.

I hate posting lousy stuff like this, but my hope is that it will help to provide some contrast with future attempts, and illustrate my progress. In the meantime, feel free to let loose with the pointing and laughing.

As you can tell from this lopsided sketch of my Dad, I haven’t had much time to soak up the knowledge contained in Tom Richmond’s “The Mad Art of Caricature,” but hey, it just showed up in my mailbox tonight. On first skim, however, it’s clear that it’s really going to help me step up my game.

Besides being packed with all sorts of caricature drawing theory, it tackles the fundamentals of anatomy–obviously the subject of countless books, but presented here with cartooning specifically in mind. For instance, you might not intend to ever realistically render a caruncula, but its existence should certainly influence the shape of your character’s eye.

Likewise, in eight colorful pages, Richmond manages to impart a ton of useful observations about hands, including why they’re such a challenge to draw, even for pros.

Anyway, I’m hoping to really dive into the book this weekend, so cross your complicated fingers that you’ll witness some improvement on the recognizable caricature front.

Conan O’Brien (pictured?) is doing his show in NY this week, so I’m heading out to try to score a seat to tonight’s taping at the Beacon Theater, which is about 100 yards from my apartment. Fun fact: When Conan did “Late Night,” he lived just down the block from me, at 72nd and Central Park West (in a slightly larger apartment, probably).

Edit: Aww, didn’t get in. On the plus side, random Tuesday off!