Day Sixteen

Finished the Chevette. I should have made better use of ruler and templates, but overall, pretty happy with this.

Finished Matt and Sonny. This one have me fits. I was only slightly disappointed with my rendering of Matt. My own work makes him look much older than he is. Trying to capture Sonny was slightly more challenging. Babies don't have a lot of lines to work with. In a previous piece I just nailed my daughter's expression when she was a baby. I guess I was overconfident. Though Sonny's face is heavily shadowed in the photo, when I rendered it in sharpie it just gave him an unformed quality that was displeasing. After much Wite-Out, I went back over it carefully in pencil, working out my measurements more carefully and then rendered it lightly with the sharpie pen, only adding sharpie marker to the edges where he meets Matt's shirt. I think it reads better this way. Either way I'm fine with this piece. Matt: I hope you don't hate this.

Now I'm going to watch my Kubert DVD and hope I learn something.

Day Fifteen

Second day on this piece. Looks good but I may wish I had used my ruler more and maybe circle templates. Machines are less forgiving with their lines.

First Kubert School book is in the mail. I'm very excited! Prepare for superheroes!

Day Fourteen

Early pencils. Decided to do something inorganic and work on perspective at the same time. When most guys decide to draw a car they pick something cool. Not this guy. I decided to commemorate this little jewel from 1983. If you were poor in the 80s, you may recognize her. Pretty happy so far. 

Some more hands, and just for fun, some noses too. You can never draw enough hands... or noses.

Day Thirteen

I am much happier with my inks than I was with my pencils. I think I was too liberal with the sharpie on Sonny. I might go back on him tomorrow with the whiteout and redo him with more subtlety. BTW, I am not particularly productive on the weekends. Need to find a way to change that. Also decided to order the Kubert School Books. Soon the art you see here will fit the blog title better.

Day Twelve: Continued

Early pencils on portrait of my friend Matt Fee and his new son Sonny James. Still really rough so don't judge it just yet. Apparently, when I run out of ideas for drawing I just jack pictures I like from Facebook. So bring your A-game people!

Day Twelve

Finished this piece first thing this morning. Very happy with it. Last night I realized I have been inadvertently brilliant. I usually quit my drawings before they are finished each day because I have to call it and get my daughter ready for the day. Why is this genius? I never start with a blank canvas. I always wake to a work already in progress. I never have to decide what I'm doing first thing in the morning. I just get up and finish yesterday's work. After that I'm all warmed up and ready to take on the next challenge. Many writers have suggested stopping your work mid-sentence, I can only assume for this exact reason.

Day Eleven: Continued

Hassan felt left out, as I had drawn his twin and not him. I felt this offered an interesting challenge. How do I draw twins and ensure they can be told apart. Primarily I chose a picture with one of Hassan's signature expressions. I'm very happy with this. It was a nice break from the mask experience. Some people find portraits to be the most difficult, but I'm just the opposite. After all, we look at each others faces probably more than anything else. Also took Jon's suggestion and used a bit of (pointalism?) I can do it, just not sure I can spell it. 

Day Eleven

I hated everything about this, EXCEPT the twine lacings. I did those this morning and I was really happy with the texture. This piece was one that I quickly regretted starting and really wanted to quit on. Part of these exercises is to be productive and complete what I start, even if I hate it. So I finished this one and in the end, I don't hate it as much as I hated drawing it.

Day Ten

This is the African Tribal Mask I started yesterday. The deeper I got into this the more lost I became. I found myself rendering the whole thing in heavy black. Although it works on some level, it is very different than my usual fare. I also realized that masks like this are what inspired the design of C3PO. I'll finish this tomorrow and take a break from the hard stuff with a portrait or two.

Day Nine: Continued

Early pencil sketching for African Tribal Mask. I plan to incorporate this into the Comedy/Tragedy mask design. I would really like to pair Anansi and Tiger in the African style. Smiling Anansi/Crying Tiger.

Day Nine

You may have noticed that I skipped a couple days over the weekend and continued my count as if nothing happened. Well, unfortunately nothing did happen over the weekend. I didn't really produce anything. So in the spirit of the Mulligan, I'm giving myself a break and continuing on as if I wasn't a total slacker. 

This is the completed piece of Aleea rendered in ink. I may decide later to paint it digitally, but for now it stand on its own well,. I think.

This is some early inking on the only piece I started this weekend. It's a rip-off of a panel from WILD C.A.T.S Issue 1. Grifter has just produced a derringer and blows the spine out of a Coda assassin. I changed up Grifter's hair and mask and added more interest to the assassin by turning her slightly and adding the back arm.

A friend has asked me to design a Tragedy/Comedy mask for a tattoo design. This is not it. This is just me copying the basic design from the interweb. I intend to try out some things with it to make it more personal and less boring.

Day Eight

Third day on this piece. Really thought I would finish it today. Guess I didn't really attack it today. Well, I have plenty of hours this weekend and should be knee deep in new drawings by Monday.

Day Seven

This was the second day working on this picture. Still not complete. Should take about half my time tomorrow to finish. Some of my best work to date. Really surprised by the success with the fabric textures and I love the zipper on the jacket. Clothing and architecture are my weakest points. At least I know where I need to focus my efforts.

What did I learn today? That you put in your time and don't fight the clock. It gets done when it's done. Although art can be a product it's not one that adapts well to time pressures.

Flashback

Here's some soft lead pencil work I did quite some time ago. I read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The self portrait was the first thing I drew with the program. The others were done a couple years later. Unfortunately this just goes to show that I've wasted a lot of time NOT doing the things at which I'm actually quite good.

But no bother. I'm not dead yet!

Recognizable but doesn't quite do me justice, right? RIGHT?!

Skylar looks great. Me not so much. Made the common mistake of throwing off head dimensions because I failed to lay it out more fully before filling in the pencils.

Really like this one. Though it reads well, it didn't truly capture the spirit of the original photo.

Despite its gruesome subject matter I was very proud of this piece. Like the preceding drawing it comes from an art photo. It's actually a very famous photo if you've never seen it before. My only disappointment with this piece is the stasis of it. You don't get a sense of the action of it. Probably because I rendered it so sharply.

Day Five

Day Five: Trying to make up for my mediocre work yesterday, I made another attempt at capturing the handsome Riad. Feel much better about it than yesterday's work. I took my time and really enjoyed the stubble effect. Didn't quite capture his expression, but still clearly Riad and not an embarrassment.

Day Four

Day Four: Crunched for time. Drew a foot. Concerned that my style will eventually resemble Mike Mignola's. Absolutely love his style, but don't want to parrot it. Guess it will look a bit like his as I'm using the same drawing implements. Too early to be concerned I guess.

BTW Suck it Rob Liefeld. That's how you draw a foot! Gross as they may be...

This Year

Three days ago I do started a year long journey. I haven't really created anything of note for a long time. Once in a while I would begin a story or make a few drawings, but nothing that amounted to anything. I find that I have no ambition after 7pm. After a ten hour workday and dinner and maybe some housework, I'm done.

Rather than give up on my hopes and dreams, I've opted to get up at 3 am every morning to hone my drawing skills. This gives me at least a couple hours a day of practice and almost seven on each weekend day.

Although I'm already a decent artist I still have plenty of room for improvement. My intent is to start my first comic after this year of practice. I may opt to utilize the Kubert correspondence school after a bit.

I will post my drawings daily so you can view my progress.

So far...

Day One: Axe Cop

 

Day Two: Warm up (not great)

Day Two: Better. Pencil, Sharpie Pen, and Fine Point Sharpie.

Day Three: Warm-up. Hitting my stride.

Day Three: Happy with first attempt at texturing fur.

Day Three: Disappointed with attempt. Over inked and dimensions are slightly off. Reattempt.