Studio Ghibli Drawing Class

Studio Ghibli Drawing Class

By Izzy

7/31/20

Today Ethan and I had our second week of an online Studio Ghibli drawing class. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese Animation studio that has made many well-known and beloved movies such as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and more. The class is 5 weeks long and we learn how to draw different characters each week. Each class advances in detail and the characters get more complicated. The teacher makes an instructional video leading us through the drawing exercises for the different characters. 

    For our first week, we started out with the easiest characters from My Neighbor Totoro, the Soot Sprites or "makkuro kurosuke." I tried drawing them with a felt tip pen, but I thought they looked best with a charcoal pencil because the color was the most true to soot. In My Neighbor Totoro, they don't have arms or legs but in Spirited Away they have arms, legs, or both like the picture below. We then learned how to draw the Bird and the Mouse from Spirited Away. It seemed hard to draw at first, but the teacher broke it down into steps and shapes that were easy to draw. After I outlined it in pen, I colored it with colored pencils and I'm proud of how it turned out.

These are the makkuro kurosuke.                    The Bird and the Mouse from Spirited Away.

    For our second class today, we started out by drawing the Kodama from Princess Mononoke. They are pretty simple characters but are fun to draw because of all the different ways to draw them. We did three different characters, all in different positions. Next, we drew Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle. He is a talking flame and one of my favorite Studio Ghibli characters. He was a bit harder to draw because I had to try a few times to get the flame outline right. We are supposed to draw four versions with different expressions, but I've only done one so far. As you can see from the picture of my drawing, we use a circle as a base for Calcifer. You then draw some jagged lines around the circle's outline and draw the big flame line.     Our last character for this week is Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service. He's a cute talking cat who accompanies Kiki on her adventures. We are also drawing four versions of Jiji with different expressions. I haven't finished the first face yet but will soon. I am so excited to be learning to draw these characters because I love all of the movies and have been watching them since I was little. In 2017 I got to go to Japan and visited the Studio Ghibli Museum which was so cool! I really hope to go back soon, as soon as it's safe of course.

 

These are the Kodama.                                        This is Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle.

                                                

                                                                    This Jiji.

                                                        These are my Kodama drawings.

My first drawing of Calcifer.

                                                    My unfinished first drawing of Jiji.