Tricorner Hack.

Those of you familiar with my graphic novel Family Man will know that I have spent many, many hours drawing  people wearing tricorn hats.  It was a style of headgear that stuck around for quite some time, and it seems to be the first shaped hat designed expressly for the purpose of driving artists crazy.  (Later fashion provided us with the fedora and the cowboy hat, in which crucibles many a cartoonist has died screaming.)

I know that you don’t want to be that person who gives up and just draws a vague lump on your character’s head.  I can’t help you with the fedora or cowboy hat – but I’m here to lend you a hand with our friend the Tricorn.

There’s one very obvious solution for how to go about properly drawing a tricorn at any angle: buy an expensive reproduction hat online and pose or photograph it as necessary.  However, that will net you many hours of digging through endless Halloween store shopping results for shapeless faux-leather “Jack Sparrow” pirate hats and weird little woolen cereal bowls with a weak brim claiming to be “Colonial hats”. When finally you get to plonk down $400 on an accurate drawing prop, you’ll probably want to do violence to your fellow human beings.

The next most obvious solution, if you’re broke or slightly insane, is to hunt down vast numbers of screen captures from appropriate period films.  I will cop to having, on hand, roughly a gigabyte of stills from 1776: The Musical: The Movie.  I will not claim that these have been unhelpful, but perhaps you aren’t interested in paging through 53 blurry images of Blythe Danner in a corset in hopes of locating that one angle of a guy in a hat.

It’s also wise to keep in mind that any period film is ALSO filtered through the period when it was filmed – hence, in 1776 we learn that Thomas Jefferson really liked 70’s style brushed-up temples.

So if you are looking for the simplest, cheapest, most rudimentary tricorner hat hack: get ready.  This will provide you with the basic folded planes of the tricorn hat so that you can sketch out the essential shape; you’re on your own for deciding the style of the crown and providing the subtler details of material and curved blocking.

Those of you who have celebrated Purim by eating hamantaschen cookies will recognize this procedure.

YOU WILL NEED: a piece of foldable paper, a pair of scissors, a pencil.

STEP ONE.

Cut out a circle of paper.  Cut it to whatever size you like; don’t worry about the shape being perfect.  (a slightly oblong shape might actually get you more accurate results later on.)

STEP TWO.

Draw an equilateral (equal-sided) triangle inside the circle so that each point touches the edge.  Again, don’t worry too much about deadly accuracy; these are just folding guidelines.

STEP THREE.

Pinch in the paper at each point.  I find it’s easiest to first pinch up two points, then move on to the third.

STEP FOUR.

Now that the points are pinched up, it should be easy for you to fold the paper along the pencil lines.  The triangle is still flat, but the extra half-circles of paper stick up.

STEP FIVE.

Behold! Whichever corner sticks forward the most is now the front brim of the hat; the other two form the back.  The triangle is the underside of the hat, where your person would normally stick their head in.  You can arrange this little paper thingie at many common angles and immediately figure out the basic arrangement of the hat’s trickiest parts. You can see that the angle I held the model at roughly replicates Luther’s hat down in the inset image.

If you want to replicate the crown of the hat, make this model big enough to accommodate half of a ping-pong ball (for a round crown) or a bottle cap (flat crown), and glue or tape it on.

In actual hats, the “corners” were often not tightly pinched together, especially in the front, so if you want to replicate that look, let the tips of the triangle run off the paper, skip the pinching, and just fold up along the lines.

Now that you have this model, I recommend you go back and look at those screencaps, or at any trustworthy reference source, to fill yourself in on style and material details/divergences.  These hats were made of anything from light felt to heavy leather, decorated with ostrich feathers and gilt, tied down, worn askew, blocked so that they sat more on the back of the head than the front, etc, and came in every size from bitsy to engulfing.

Regardless, this little model will help you draw a tricky angle when your reference sources aren’t working out.

Enjoy the increased ease of drawing one of history’s most frustrating hats!

____

ADDENDUM:  lovely reader Jenn S. made up a nice little cheater template for those of you who don’t want to draw your own circles and triangles!  Click to view and download at full size, then print and use at will.  Thanks, Jenn!

I’m back from Comic-Con International and, given enough naps, I think I might even recover!

While there, I kept a little sketch journal of some of the wackier things I encountered, or, more factually, my reactions to them.

Click the picture to check out the whole set on Flickr!

It was a crazy time – wonderful to see so many friends, colleagues, and readers, crazy costumes and bizarre set pieces.  This was my first time going as a Professional Cartoonist ™ and that added a certain amount of angst – am I annoying everybody?  Will I sell enough?  Am I talking to the right people?  How many boxes did I ship?  But it was exciting to be at a point in my professional development where those were meaningful considerations.  Six years ago, I was looking up to people like me!  Pretty cool.

Thank you to everybody who spoke to me, bought a book, or gave a friendly smile at the convention.  It’s a pleasure.  Even if my feet still hurt two days out.

Art sale!

Hey all!  I’m experiencing one of those Freelance Moments(tm) where I’m short on cash despite being heartily employed.  Solution:  art sale!

I traditionally hate parting with original art, particularly from comics projects and especially when it’s not an in-person sale; it’s a little easier when I design something to be given away or when I get to meet the person taking it home!

So this is your excellent chance to snag some art from me if you don’t typically make it to conventions.

Up for sale on Etsy, everything from convention doodles to original art from Click.

The scans are on the murky side so that you can see the pencil lines underneath the inking!  These are slightly visible in real life so you and your friends can TELL it’s original art.

Animals for Animals: Concertina Bat

Here’s the last Animals for Animals painting that went up for public sale – a fruit bat!  A tip of the hat to Jenn, who suggested the concertina.

Thanks to everybody who purchased one of the animals this month; thanks to you I’ll be able to donate at least $550 to Heifer International (I had to raise a bit past that to cover all the transaction fees from Paypal, Etsy, and my postage service).

As soon as the deposit clears, I will be donating the money to Heifer for a Knitting Basket, which represents two llamas and two sheep, and a Hope Basket, which will go towards some rabbits and chickens.

You’ll also be seeing an owl and a dormouse posted here soon (if the people who asked for them are okay with the world getting to see them once they’re finished!).

If you’d like more information on Heifer International, they’ve got a great website, and their print catalogue is the only charity publication that elicits smiles from me when it turns up in the mail.

Animals for Animals: Three French Hens

The penultimate Animals for Animals watercolor!  Next I’ll do a bat, and then I have one or two that have been specifically commissioned (I’m workin’ on em gang, don’t worry!) and won’t be for sale.

FOR SALE NOW AT ETSY.

…why, what else did you think hens would read?  Tolstoy?  I doubt it.

This piece does double-duty as part of 12 Days of Periscope Christmas over at ComicsAlliance.  Thanks to Laura Hudson for coming up with the brilliant notion of hiring us all on to illustrate the classic carol all comic-book style.

Animals for Animals: Musical Bees! (and Gaming Rats)

Today’s Animals for Animals:  musical bees!  Once I had the Morning Glory Victrola idea I couldn’t help myself, even though I know that fewer people are obsessed with cute insects. Up for sale at Etsy.

Bees are the second animal I’ve painted that Heifer International actually deals with (although granted, not bumblebees like these)!  Apiaries are apparently an amazing income supplement in rural communities, and with honeybees on the wane, encouraging cultivation is more important than ever.

Wednesday’s animal was: Gaming Rats.

I realized after painting it that it’s a chillingly accurate psychological portrait of my family’s game nights.  My dad is a tender-hearted pacifist who refuses to adopt the ruthless capitalist strategy necessary to win at Monopoly.  Whereas my mom is a heartless predator, and I’m her cheerful apprentice.

I’m knocking at the door of my $500 goal!  Yay!

Family Man update! And more!

Page 163 of Family Man now online!

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Oh, little Ariana.  You are going to be making that face a whole bunch more as time goes on. And so will I if I have to draw too many more pages of grass.  (I’m kidding, it’s actually kind of a relief to do something loose; it’s just a pain to ink all those blades.)

And hey check it out, kids, if you order a copy of Bite Me! between now and Christmas you get a free drawing inside.  If you order the fancy package that already includes a drawing, well!  In addition to a drawing of one of the main characters you ALSO will get the complimentary addition of a chicken looking on at them.  I know how to bring it.

Animals for Animals: Knitting Hedgehog

Today’s Animals for Animals original watercolor fundraiser is a Knitting Hedgehog!

What a sweet little fellow.  Maybe he’s knitting a full-body scarf for a weasel friend.

For sale on Etsy!

Animals for Animals: Connected Otter

Today’s Heifer International fundraising painting-for-sale:  a Connected Otter!

It’s not a MacBook.  It’s a ShellBook!  (that’s why it works underwater.)  This otter understands that in today’s wired world, being down on the river bottom eating a fish is no excuse for being out of touch.

Animals for Animals: Leggy Llama

Behold!  Another day, another fundraising critter for Heifer International.  These things keep selling immediately!  (If you want a good leap on one then I recommended hanging around my Twitter account between 11 and 3 Pacific.)

I love this one so much, guys.  Witness ye the Leggy Llama.

Also already sold!  I think I’ll start noodging the price up a little bit, since folks seem to be very enthusiastic about both the paintings and the beneficiary.

After I raise $500 I will produce prints so that those of you without much spending money can contribute, too!