A Drawing for Chris

This one goes out to my buddy Chris, who sent me a note saying, "I've noticed that the majority of your drawings are facing left to right, unless they are under some type of emotional duress... Is it because you are right handed, and it is more natural to draw a face that way?"

Before I get to my response, I want to say this: I went through every last entry for this year, and 90% of the right-facing drawings are a) of me and moreover b) of me doing Crossfit.  And so I say unto you, Chris, those expressions are not so much emotional duress as extreme physical duress, thankyouverymuch.

::cough::

Anyway, here's what I said in my actual email to him:

"My drawings tend to face left just because that's what naturally flows out of my pen. If I had to guess I'd say it's because I'm right-handed, which makes the curve to the left (like a C) easier than the curve to the right, and since that's the curve I use to start my profiles, that's the direction they end up. I do occasionally make an effort to draw the other direction, just to make sure I still can. Same reason I make myself draw men from time to time- I'm not as comfortable with it, so it requires more practice.

There's also the possibility that I draw them that way because we read from left-to-right, so by facing a character in that direction it's almost like I'm drawing your attention to their eyes, to make contact, whereas if I draw them facing right your eyes follow their eyes to whatever they're looking at. That IS something that I consciously take advantage of when I'm doing comics- remember the Valentine I made for Nathan? The character is facing to the right because I wanted your eye to move that way, from the girl to the baby. If I'd drawn it the other way it would have read baby to girl, and it wouldn't have made as much sense to your brain. It would have been stilted, because you'd be seeing the action backwards and trying to piece it together."*

So how's that for an art-school-y answer?

Anyway, as a result of this little exchange, I made it a point to draw Barbarian Princess (a character who's made appearances in my sketchbooks since 2003) facing to the right.

To really keep with the spirit of the challenge I should have drawn a man.  Oh well.

*I line-edited my response to post it here, because apparently I was have a particularly dim-witted day when I wrote him back, and blathered on about reading "right to left".  Whoops.