Analog Blog!

2009-06-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

What?! Another entry?! Impossible! —

Gonna try to update this blog every Friday. Here's some heads:

PLUS, I totally brought my sketchbook to the bar and drew these three old dudes just having a whale of a time drinking and bullshitting about something, probably sports. At first I was trying to be all surreptitious and secret about drawing them, but a couple of pints accidentally went down my neck very quickly and then I stopped caring about social conventions and just basically stared at them. I doubt they even noticed, sadly.

Oh, and I decided I wanted to start entering sketch challenges on message boards, but the only one I could find was a challenge to draw fucking Annihilus, which I really didn't want to do, hence this shitty marker sketch. I didn't even bother scanning and posting it, but I'm putting it up here and now, for some reason.

2009-06-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

What it is —

Yup. Been busy. Not making any excuses. Here's some drawings. Trying to doodle more, since I picked up Toth's Dear John book from Jeff Parker at Emerald City. It's still kinda scary to just pick up my pen and go at a blank page without at least laying down some pencil lines first, but I managed it on the last couple of pages.

2009-04-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Emerald City, Ho! —

Going down to Seattle for a con this weekend and planning to try my hand at some sketches. Could be fun, could be a disaster. Here are some samples of sketch cards I've done up for the con (click the pic if you want a better look):

Also, here's the inks of a print I did up for the con:

2009-02-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

With Gusto! —

Been drawing and coloring with my son a lot lately. He's 3, and a great little artist. These are a few of our collaborations (hopefully, I don't need to explain who did what):

2009-02-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

Rhymes with "both" —

Been totally obsessed with Alex Toth for a couple of months now. A master! Been just staring and staring at his work. Occasionally picking up a pencil to try to capture, understand, a line or a detail. I know I'll never be a tenth the artist, but it's nice to know what the gold standard is, how high the bar has been raised.

"Toth was put here to keep the rest of us humble." -- Adam Hughes

2009-02-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

"SWEAR TO ME!!" —

2009-02-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

More Sketchiness —

Went to another Dr Sketchy's thing last night. It was really challenging because there were two models and they were both super fat. I'd spent the previous month studying my anatomy reference books, ironically, mostly focusing on muscles, none of which were really visible in these girls. In the end, I concentrated on drawing the figure through contour and shape, rather than overthinking the underlying structure -- drawing from the outside in, rather than the inside out, if that makes any sense at all. Also, I have a hard time drawing multiple figures and making it look like they're actually occupying the same space, so it was good to be forced to practice that.

2009-01-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Dr Sketchy's —

Hadn't really been drawing much of anything for weeks and needed a kick in the pants that Dr. Sketchy's was only too happy to provide. Dr. Sketchy's is basically an attempt to marry figure drawing classes with fun, good music, and booze. I've never done any life/figure drawing classes, so this was really outside of my comfort zone, which is probably why I'm happier with the results than I suspect I should be. I definitely need to make time at least once a month for life drawing. It's so great to sit down and dedicate 3 hours just to drawing.

2008-12-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

Long Time, No Post —

So, yeah, it's been approximately forever since my last post. Things got really busy about a month ago with work (I'm coloring 2 books for Marvel at the moment, plus various other covers and commissions) so I haven't really had much time for sketching. And lately I've been pretty unhappy with the results. Oh, well. I'll probably have more time in the coming months, plus I've really fallen in love with Alex Toth's work lately, and that's been inspiring me to pick up the pencil more often. Anyway, here's what's worth posting from the lat 2 months. It's not much, but it's better than nothing!

2008-10-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I am a cheap caricaturist —

I love my mom, but from time to time, she'll ask me to do things I really don't want to do, like draw a caricature of her boss on a train. Apparently, she talked to an actual caricaturist and he wanted like a whole hundred dollars, so she said screw that and press-ganged me into doing it for nothing. Actually, she offered me 50 bucks, but I'd rather get paid nothing for this lousy drawing.

Hilariously, I have no idea if this caricature even remotely resembles her boss, since the only ref she sent was a tiny jpg of the guy taken from like a football field away. Also, trains are fucking hard to draw. You will observe that I had no idea what to do with the front, nor did I care to figure it out.

2008-10-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

Spidery-Man, plus cheesecake —

Still loving that Pentel brush pen. Still loving tits.

2008-09-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

I Steal You Scanner, Foo —

Ha! Who needs to buy a scanner when you can just steal one every two weeks when your studio mate is out of town? Not me, that's who. Also, I gotta say there's something to be said for only posting the most interesting stuff from the past 2 weeks. Nice to be able to weed out the crap doodles and still have stuff worth posting!

2008-09-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

Jeez, I really need to get my own scanner —

Haven't been able to hop on my studio mate's scanner in a bit. Anyway, in addition to still keeping at the gesture/stick figure work, I've been slowly working my way through Loomis's Fun With A Pencil. Figure I'll post some stuff from that:

2008-09-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Test —

Just thought I'd test out a new process for drawing. I drew blue line stick figures and rough structure lines, fleshed those out with a 2H pencil, and finished with my Pentel brush pen. Pretty happy with the results.

2008-09-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

Low Fidelity —

Decided I needed to listen to the Beta Band's "Dry the Rain" and the High Fidelity Soundtrack was the only copy I had of the track. Saw the cover and figured it'd be fun to try to reproduce in my new Moleskine, which it was, until I tried to work faster and totally arsed the inking on that last face. Oh, well. I found it tricky to get the features placed because I was only drawing part of a head. I probably should have sketched in the proper structure lines first before putting details down. Oh well. Fun drawing anyway. Still loving that brush pen.

2008-08-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Moleskine! —

I also picked up a Moleskine sketchbook for my birthday. I've heard such great things, and was so blown away by Sean Phillips' and Duncan Fegredo's Intersections that I thought I'd pick one up. It's cool. Great paper, and I'm getting used to the size. At first I felt it was a bit too small and restrictive, but there's a lot to be said for being able to work smaller and faster.

I also learned really quickly that, as nice as the paper is, it sure doesn't hold up to either Copic markers or watercolor pencils for shit. Grr.

2008-08-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

Pentel Brush Pen!!! —

Pentel Brush Pen!!

Seriously, how great is this thing?! Karl Kerschl uses it! Sean Phillips does too! It's badass. I was always afraid of inking with a brush, but I got one of these for my birthday (I asked for it) and now the fear, she is gone. I mean, I'm not gonna throw out my Staedtler pigment liners or anything, but I fricking love this brush pen. So much so that I went out and bought a really nice Windsor-Newton brush from Opus, which is also great. Inking is really fun suddenly. Now if only I didn't suck so much at it ...

2008-08-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

More of the Same —

2008-08-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah —

I know. I haven't been posting. I have been drawing, though, so that's gotta count for something, right?

Right?

On this first one, I got to wondering if all this stick figure work would pay off, so I fleshed out one of the sticks and was happy enough with the results that I resolved to draw about a thousand more sticks.

2008-08-06T21:33:00.000-07:00

MORE! —

Can't stop drawing these!

2008-08-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

More Stick Figures —

These are fun.

2008-08-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

Figure Drawing For All It's Worth —

A few months ago, I won an e-bay auction for a copy of Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. When the book arrived, though, it was so musty I could barely stand to have it in my apartment. It sat for about a month in a black garbage bag filled with kitty litter. Eventually the stench of it was bearable enough for me to pick up, but I didn't feel I had the time to devote to studying the book until recently. Loomis really was an excellent draughtsman, and the instruction he gives is priceless.

Loomis stresses the value of construction. Here are the first of as many of Loomis's simple stick figures as it takes for me to feel I have a good enough grasp of proportion and balance to move onto Loomis's more complex stick figures. Not a lot of fun to look at, but good practice.

2008-08-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Watercolor is hard —

That's it, really. A few months back, I picked up some supplies and a book and thought I'd give it a go. Not bad results for a first go. Hopefully I'll be able to make time to do one of these every month or so.

2008-08-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

Doodles —

Here's some doodling I did with my 3-year-old son last night. It's scary how I can draw all these Pixar characters pretty much from memory now.

2008-08-04T12:15:00.000-07:00

I'm BAAAACK —

Huh. Like 5 months, no post. Crap. That wasn't the plan. Ah well, I was busy and no one reads this blog anyway. Who cares. Here's some sketches I did a few months back. The first is of Viggo. I was reading The Road and couldn't believe how perfectly they had cast the father.

This next is just a silly drawing of Power Girl, who is apparently some kind of female Super-man analog, but all I really know about her is that she's got these ridiculously huge tits that fanboys go ape over. Anyway, I thought it would be funny if I drew her in a classic Superman pose, ripping open her shirt to save the day, except instead of the big yellow and red 'S' under there, it's just a huge pile of tits. Funny idea, but the pose sucks and I can't draw shirts.

This last drawing is of my son, who is way cuter than this skecth would lead you to believe. What I learned -- don't draw kids' teeth like that. Also, don't fuck up the eyes like that. Pretty happy with the hands, though.