He's got the right idea. He's drawing using construction. And some perspective too - which is missing from a lot of people's studies. The sketch has a nice feeling too. My only criticism is the proportions have been evened out. Porky's cranium to muzzle ratio is more exaggerated in the original. His head should be bigger in proportion to his body too.Here's some good stuff to copy - if you copy it the right way, you can absorb a lot.
Dennis the Menace is very well structured at the top level, with the odd bit of cartoon license and style thrown in to offset it. But you can totally see how the stylish details still wrap around the basic forms. If you copy it, don't start by drawing Turkey lumps, start with the solid forms underneath, and then level by level break the big forms into the next set of sub-forms and look for the patterns and forms within each sub form.
These probably are drawn by Ketcham's "ghosts" a team he trained to draw in his style - his apprentices. They had to be able to draw well in the first place in order to then take on such a unique and thoughtful style.
There is an apparent looseness to the finish of these drawings, but don't be fooled by it. The drawings are very well planned at the top level and the final linework has much artistic flair - they aren't sloppy. When you get to the point where you are so confident in your knowledge and skill and style, you then can be looser with your approach and wander off into your own style - but that takes a long time. This knowledgeable looseness can be full of license and lucky accidents if you have a natural flair as some rare cartoonists achieve.Here are some nice Woody Woodpecker comics - less obviously stylized but still very stylish in a softer way.
These 2 pictures are gorgeous - great skill, and great style and very fun to look at.
This one's getting a bit too stylish, wandering into slight abstraction, but still a good drawing.
Just for contrasts' sake here is a later bland version of Woody where everyone is made out of simple flat ovals and circles - a lot stiffer and unnatural and lifeless. I've never been able to figure out why cartooning got so conservative by the 50s.BAD WOODY
How could people who actually had all that knowledge just a few short years earlier, willingly abandon it in favor of boring, unfunny, lifeless ultra-conservative blandness? It was downhill even from here.
