Terrible Artist: Difference between revisions

[[File:usagivision.jpg|link=Sailor Moon|frame|[[Sarcasm Mode|Surely, this will convince any cynic]].]]

 

 

A subtrope of [[Stylistic Suck]]. Whenever a character not already informed or displayed to have any talent with art creates something, it will almost always be a crudely drawn thing that would make a grade school art teacher weep. Expect inconsistencies, weird space and size relations, a lack of perspective, and the coloring (often in crayon) to be both uneven and often go over the lines, while being professionally drawn in other departments. Often, the actual drawing won't be near as bad as the reactions they garner (this is the entertainment industry, after all), making this similar to [[Hollywood Homely]] in a sense.

If the drawing is ''so bad'' no one can tell what it's supposed to depict, it's [[Playing Pictionary]].

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Sket Dance]]'', Himeko's animal drawings end up looking like [[Nightmare Fuel|grizzled/mutated/freaky]] versions of whatever she intended to draw.

* Rukia from ''[[Bleach]]'', who would accompany her explanations with incredibly cheesy drawings (of rabbits) that everybody treats as a lot more horrific than they really are.

** Byakuya can't draw any better.

** The promotional material for her division, the thirteenth, includes bunny-Ukitake. Apparently, his taste is also questionable, as he writes "Kuchiki, your drawings are good as usual!" on it.

* [[Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu|Nogizaka Haruka]] is good at almost everything... except drawing.

* On ''[[Eyeshield 21]]'' art is the one class at which A-student Mamori doesn't excel, and her bad drawings are a running gag.

** Conversely, Togano of the Ha-Ha Brothers is said to excel at Art, which is in fact the only class he ''isn't'' nearly failing... But when we see a few pages of the extremely derivative and unoriginal manga he's working on, the art's incredibly rough and difficult to follow, in what might be an in-joke about [[Art Evolution]].

** Subverted and parodied in that, ''because'' Akane's sketches are so awful, Ryouga recognizes her. Akane isn't very good at arts and crafts...

* Subverted in ''[[Ichigo Mashimaro]]''. Miu's manga drawings won't make it into professional publishing anytime soon, but they're still very acceptable for someone her age.

* Subverted in ''[[Inuyasha]]'' - given that he's the demonic equivalent of five years old and working in crayons, Shippo's not bad.

* Yellow's drawings in ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' are like this.

* When Daikichi is looking for Rin's birth tree in ''[[Bunny Drop]]'', he asks Masako (Rin's neglectful mother), who is the only living person who knows where it is. She draws him a map. It's terrible. The fun part: Masako is a ''published mangaka''.

'''Masako:''' Not the kind that draws '''''maps!''''' }}

* Miyako of ''[[Hidamari Sketch]]'' is a variation. While she is a [[Ditzy Genius|Ditzy Art Genius]], her drawings can sometimes range from demented scribbles to [[Nightmare Fuel|horrifyingly freaky]] depictions of however the object being drawn appears in her messed-up brain.

* Whenever [[The World God Only Knows|Keima]] tries to explain something via drawing, the first reaction he gets is usually "wow, you suck at drawing".

* In ''[[GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class]]'', Homura's membership in the Art Club clearly did not improve his drawing skills any.

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]'' features Happy Noodle Boy, a "Comic within a comic" about a [[Talkative Loon|gibberish-spouting]] stick figure, drawn by the [[Sociopathic Hero|main character]] himself. The segments are deliberately done to be so awful, they actually [[So Bad It's Good|end up extremely funny]]. The creator, Jhonen Vasquez, also uses them as a nifty way to illustrate Johnny's current mental state?

* Max's scribbles and graffiti doodles in the ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'' comics are crude, but quite stylish and proportionate with decent shading. Averted in the Telltale games, though, where they're convincingly bad drawings - presumably a less artistically-gifted member of the team was drafted in to do them.

 

== Film ==

* Napoleon's bizarre artwork in ''[[Napoleon Dynamite]]''. Napoleon covers his notebooks with crudely drawn sketches of monsters and magic. He is apparently oblivious to his art's [[Stylistic Suck]], and he tries to impress Trisha by drawing her picture. Unfortunately for him, the result is just awful. Still Napoleon says "It took me like three hours to finish the shading on your upper lip. It's probably the best drawing I've ever done."

 

== Literature ==

 

** When Sylar does the same, his paintings are strange and deformed.

*** He also had it when he drew a near photorealistic portrait of Cordelia, while Fred just drew a crude [[Bedsheet Ghost]].

*** Which ties back to Angel doing quite detailed portraits of Buffy, during his time in Sunnydale as Angelus; he's got artistic talent and a habit of drawing rather stalker-esque pictures of girls he likes.

* When Miley loses her horse, Blue Jeans, during part 1 of the ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' episode, "Miley Says Goodbye", Lilly draws a sketch of the horse to use for the lost-and-found poster. The horse looks very stick-figure-like, to Miley and Robbie Ray's chagrin.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Played with in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. In a variant of [[Art Initiates Life]], Calvin becomes the scribbly version of his drawings and ends up not knowing what to do because he can't for the life of him figure out what he's supposed to ''be.''

* Inverted in one ''[[FoxTrot]]'' strip, where Paige's still-life paintings begin in a very photorealistic and eventually progress to the strip's cartoony style. Her parents praise the latter as evidence that her skills are getting better.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

== Theatre ==

* In ''[[A Very Potter Musical]]'', Draco Malfoy draws AWESOMELY!

 

== Video Games ==

** His artwork is actually surprisingly ''good'' for the living incarnation of [[Just Eat Gilligan]]; it's the fact that his painting displays something utterly impossible {{spoiler|from a certain perspective}} that puts his talents (and sanity) into question.

** A similar occurrence happens with his {{spoiler|autograph}} in ''[[Ace Attorney Investigations]]: Miles Edgeworth''. {{spoiler|While not technically impossible, the discrepancy is very important to the case.}}

** Not only was the drawing bad, but it was such a chaotic mess that it's wonder how anyone is suppose to realize it's about said mini-game

* In ''[[Ratchet and Clank]] 3'', [[Fake Ultimate Hero|Captain Qwark's]] "Genius plans" for military operations against the robots are crayon scribbles mostly involving air-dropping Ratchet alone in the battle zone and hoping for the best.

** [[One-Man Army|Which is, nonetheless, a good plan]].

* In ''[[Anachronox]]'', a minor NPC (the doorman to Rowdy's bar) will show various pictures he drew to the main character; they range from crude stick figures to bizarre but well-drawn scenes to nonsensical scribblings, finally ending with a blank piece of paper. Most of the time, he'll just comment with "It's not very good" or "I think I'm getting better", but if you approach him with the party's [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]], Rho Bowman, she will go into art expert mode and they'll veer off into deep and bizarre analysis of each picture.

** The ''Chain of Memories'' manga implies this is the case. It also shows off the fact that Sora is a terrible artist when he attempts to draw Riku and Mickey.

** Actually, some of her sketches of ''places'' in KH2 are quite good, crayon or not. It's ''people'' she can't draw, and considering that [[Fridge Brilliance|some of them are people she's only briefly, if ever, met...]]

 

== Web Animation ==

** But they're ''nothing'' compared to brother Strong Mad's crude doodles. One time, he drew a picture of an egg-shaped thing with oval-shaped eyes, a mouth, and stick arms and legs and labeled it "BABBY ALIEN" - it was ''supposed'' to be a drawing of Strong Bad when he was little.

** At the end of the Sbmail [http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail102.html "Lunch Special,"] Strong Mad sends Strong Bad his [[MS Paint]] drawing of a [http://www.hrwiki.org/w/images/4/48/dinosaurbreakfast.PNG brontosaurus eating breakfast] via email. Having been unable to receive a picture of a hot girl via email earlier, Strong Bad briefly [[Cargo Ship|flirts]] with the picture before declaring he needs to get out of the house.

 

== Web Comics ==

* One ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' strip had Gabe creating a character named "[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/05/05/ Dr. Raven Darktalon Blood]" which was a satire of Todd McFarlane and the whole [[Darker and Edgier]] concept in general. Later on, there was [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/05/04/ a short arc] depicting an indie comic book produced in a Kinko's following the character (opening with said character saying, "This tomb will be your grave!").

** Although they're technically in [[Sprite Comic|the same style]] as the rest of the comic.

* Justified and subverted in ''[[Zebra Girl]]'': Sandra's comics are pretty well drawn for someone that has ten-inch-long claw-tipped fingers. And then she yields to her demon side, and her drawings become... disturbed.

* After the first story arc of [[Skin Horse]], in which the main characters have to talk a genetically engineered lion down from a rampage, said lion decides to start a gaming webcomic about a couple of lions on a couch. Since then, the weekend strips have occasionally been examples of his work-poorly drawn (which is to be expected from a guy with no thumbs) depictions of a pair of lions discussing games and an antelope who is a ridiculous strawman for opinions Leo disagrees with (he's invariably eaten at the end of each strip).

* In [http://community.livejournal.com/dante_res_comic/15510.html this] ''[[Dante Residential]]'' comic, Ralph has drawn a crappy stick figure comic that he shows to an unimpressed Torvald.

* A few ''[[Dark Legacy Comics]]'' strips have Donald as the artist (and hero). They're crudely drawn and after the 2nd one, Keydar remarks that Donald's never allowed to draw again.

* Any attempt at imitating the ''[[Sonichu]]'' art style - Chris draws so bad, it's impossible to imitate his style properly (especially if it's drawn by a talented artist).

 

== Western Animation ==

* [[Older Than They Think|Possibly the earliest example of this trope]] would be the [[Tex Avery]] [[Porky Pig]] short "Porky's Preview", which centers around Porky showing off an animated short he made-only the animation consists of doodles and the film as a whole is incredibly sloppily made. What makes this short even more amusing is that the ending leaves it ambiguous whether {{spoiler|it was the skunk that scared off Porky's audience or the horrible quality of the picture that scared them off first. That being said, the skunk was impressed enough to applaud.}}

* Followed shortly by the ''[[Popeye]]'' short "Cartoons Ain't Human." Popeye makes his own cartoon and screens it for his nephews and Olive. Popeye furnishes the voices, music and sound effects during the screening.

* In ''[[Duck Amuck]]'', Daffy asks at one point for scenery. The artist obliges with a very crudely drawn background (even though he's been shown as capable of drawing competently.) Daffy is not amused though mostly because there's no color.

* Wile E. Coyote's blueprints for catching the Road Runner feature what looks like stick figures.

* ''Wacky Delly'', a cartoon show within the world of ''[[Rocko's Modern Life]]''. Made by Rocko and his friends, it is a poorly-drawn, poorly edited excuse for animated entertainment, epic in its amateurishness. It is also the single funniest moment in the entire series.

* ''[[Chowder]]'', in the episode "Sing Beans", once literally drew a straw, which ended up looking more like a wobbly vertical line on his sheet of paper. Mung, probably due to general [[Cloudcuckoolander|scatterbrain-ness]], ''still'' thought it was better than Schnitzel's much more realistic drawing.

* Similarly, an episode of ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show]]'' had Stimpy making his own cartoon, "Explodey the Pup in: 'I Like Pink'" and show it off to eccentric, borderline-senile cartoonist Wilbur Cobb. The cartoon is badly drawn, animated, and scripted, and makes almost no sense, in [[So Bad It's Good|an endearing sort of way]].

** [[Disability Superpower|Toph]] [[Deadpan Snarker|enjoys mentioning]] [[Stealth Insult|how similar to the subject his drawings look to her.]]

** This goes against his ability to plan things out, as he demonstrates he can calculate things down to the ''minute'' (with [http://rufftoon.deviantart.com/art/Why-Avatar-episodes-are-late-82897585 "help"]). Including bathroom breaks (offering to join them and eating times together). His art is fail, his planning is ''epic''.

* An episode of ''[[Doug]]'' inverts this, with the school bully able to paint an amazing, full color sunset with only blue paint in less than five seconds.

* In an episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Chief Wiggum mentions the police can't afford guns anymore, and he can now only carry a crude picture of a gun drawn in crayon named "Daddy's Bang-Bang". Lou thinks it was drawn by his son, Ralph, but Chief Wiggum reveals that he drew it himself.

** Inverted in "Mom and Pop Art." Homer scribbles on a piece of paper when Moe tells him he can pay with a priceless sketch. Barney asks if he can do the same but is rejected, dropping his copy of "Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte". Homer's sketch is not shown.

* In ''[[Unsupervised]]'' Gary draws pictures of his [[Disappeared Dad|dad]] to remember what he looks like. When he shows one to Carol, his step-mom, she doesn't recognize him and remarks that "his mouth looks like an asshole."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Art Tropes]]