How to NOT Draw!

Meet my new character, B. A. Draxton.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h120/oncooolc/ba.jpg
According to my best bud Pawky, he's a Matrix Reject and a mar on the face of the planet as far as character design goes, which is probably true. However, I don't particularly care and love him dearly anyways. <3

But she brings up an excellent point.

Draxton is the direct product of me reading far too many "How To Draw..." books, the current one being Drawing Cutting Edge Comics by Christopher Heart. Reading these books will greatly diminish any individual's ability to work through proper character design.

Why? The steriotype pages. Every single one of these books I have read has had a section describing how to make characters look cool, snappy, and interesting. Every single one of these sections has merely been several murals to the world of underdeveloped steriotypes. They are baaaaad things that should be skipped over.

In fact, one should just skip over these books entirely. They suck.

They encourage step-by-step drawing instead of creatively analyzing a subject and drawing from the mind. They enforce bad art habbits. Many of them purposefully sway the reader into improper proportions. They're just bad, bad, bad, bad, and don't teach the reader what they really need to know. These things are TRAPS that suck in ametuer artists and shackle them, creating bad habits that are hard to rid oneself of later in life.

So why do I keep reading them?

Why?