Here are some drawings by Becky. She has a very strong personal style of her own, but has chosen to go back and practice some classic cartoon construction to supplement her already impressive talents.
These Preston Blair dogs show that she has a good grasp of hierarchy - making the details subject to the physics of the larger shapes. She also has a very natural flair for nice linework and appealing shapes.
I think she actually had an easier time drawing 40s style characters than the HB style, which at first glance seems simpler.
Becky drew a really cute Quick Draw above, but the proportions are different than the drawing she was studying. Obviously when I draw HB style, I change the proportions drastically too, but that's after first trying to learn the way they are actually designed and constructed and using that as a stepping stone for experiments.
HB isn't merely drawing flat or with no rules. The best HB artists - like Ed Benedict, Dick Bickenbach and Harvey Eisenberg knew and used the old cartoon animation principles and just applied them in a (superficially) simpler way. They cheated the odd little thing for style, but not everything.
When studying anything, it's usually best to be conservative and anal about it - to try to get your studies as accurate as possible - and to understand how something is built and why it looks the way it does. So you can tell the difference between stylistic license and mistakes.
This is great practice and the more someone analyzes their studies and makes adjustments, the faster they progress.
