Life Drawings

Don't do as much figure drawing as I used to. Getting a bit rusty. These are a couple of recent ones that I thought turned out pretty good.

Jig

My Praw-sess

Thumnails: I do these in ballpoint pen in my sketchbook.

Roughs : Red pencil on bristol board.

Pencils (cleanups?): Blue pencils on top of the red.

Inks: Right on top of the pencils. I use #3 round liner brush for contours and large details, Staedtler pigment liner for lettering, hatching, and small details, and a broad dip pen for panel borders. Thinking about getting one of those Windsor-Newton series 7 jobs that all the bigshots use.

Computer: Scan at 300 dpi. Whatever pencil marks I can't erase, I white out using the hue/saturation adjustment. Then I tweak the levels and do a bit of manual cleanup.

So there it is. Feel free to criticize and/or share your own praw-sesses. I'm toiling in isolation here, and never get to talk shop, so, please, don't be shy!

Azrael #1

Finally able to post comics again! From now on, expect one every other Friday.

Excuse this brief fanboy moment

I was never a fan of superhero comics, but I liked Sam Kieth's The Maxx. It was trippy and sexy and the art was really interesting, at least compared to the flashy crap that was being done elsewhere in mainstream comics in the 90's.

I realized recently that there's a direct lineage between my favourite anatomy guy, George Bridgman, and Sam Kieth. Y'see, Bridgman begat Frazetta (who I have a completely un-ironic love for, btw), and Frazetta begat Kieth. All three of them have this great "volume-y" way of doing the figure, which I'm always trying to emulate.

Anyhoo, here's my little tribute. I sketched it today during a particularly boring class. God, I hope that none of my old fine arts professors see this!

Fools

Almost perfect

Sometimes a thing just strikes all the right notes on your eyeballs. Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) talks about having this reaction when he looks at plastic cooties.

I took this photo years ago in a small community near Stephenville called (I think) Boswarlos. Now, to call this almost perfect is in no way a compliment to my photography skill; I merely stood in front of it and clicked. The artist here is the individual who designed this building, chose its dazzling red and turquoise colour scheme, and artfully arranged all the crazy junk around it. I especially love the yellow plastic thing on the picnic table. Pure eyeball joy!

p.s. I recently sent this pic to my sister to use as source material for one of her paintings. Keeping my fingers crossed that she uses it!