Thugs ch. 1
Chapter 1. KA-POW!
“It isn’t as painful if you pretend like it’s happening to someone else.”
subajju
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Timmy Vs. Darkness
This is the first page of the children’s story Timmy Vs. Darkness. There are a few things I will probably change. I used special brushes to get the watercolor feel. The image resolution isn’t that great but at full resolution, one can see the speckles of ‘simulated’ light reflection in the water colored area. Software used to create this page was Manga Studio – now renamed as Clip Studio Paint.
Broken Parts – Episode: Pies R Squared
Broken parts – Rough sheets
Below are the first six pages of the script. These are the rough layouts. Click on the cover page to view the pages.
Broken Parts – Episode: Pies R Squared
Below are the first six pages of the fully executed episode “Pies R Squared” from the saga “Broken Parts“. The book Pies R Squared also contains additional artwork, selected script pages and other visual development artwork. It’s a 48 page, 8.5 x 11 inches volume.
Pen and Charcoal Quicks
Two very quick sketches, one done with charcoal stump on newsprint paper, the other with pen and ink on a 8 x 6 inch sketchbook. Both done with live models. Had I not done the pen and ink drawing with the live reference, I probably wouldn’t have drawn her seated that way – slightly off the center on the bar stool. It definitely helps to have references 🙂
Seeing Things
I was invited to do a short workshop on figure drawing this week. One of the artists at the session commented on how their hand doesn’t obey their brain – if only the hand followed instructions from the brain, their drawings would have been so good. He was right, provided the brain saw clearly and gave specific instructions to the hand. One of the reasons drawings don’t turn out the way we want them to is that the brain does not issue clear instructions. And that’s because the brain doesn’t have the tools to understand and interpret what it is seeing. So, how to make our mind see human figure clearly?
The human body is visually very complex (to the say least). There are many shapes, volumes, planes and structures. The only way we can train our mind to see the human figure clearly is to train it to see the figure in simple volumes first – spheres, boxes, tubes, bowls etc., I have an example below. This charcoal life drawing was done at a sketch session at the Art Students League, New York. It was a seven or eight minute pose – we had seven or eight minutes left for the end of the drawing session before we had to vacate the room. I did an overlay drawing using the software Clip Studio. The overlay drawing is made of simple volumes: sphere, lines, tubes, bowl, etc., My suggestion to artists who are learning figure drawing is to train your mind to see the model in these simple volumes. The mind can then do a far better job of giving clearer instructions to the hand.
Broken Parts Doodle 1
A pen and ink sketch from my sketch book. This is a doodle for my graphic novel Broken Parts – Episode: Pies Are Squared.
Another 20
A twenty minute life-drawing. Drawing hands and foot took time. This was done at Society of Illustrators Sketch Night.
20 Life
Like all the charcoal figure drawings at this website, this was done at a life drawing session. There were about forty or so artists drawing and painting at that session. This was a twenty minute pose – the model was about twelve or fifteen feet away – on a small podium. He was leaning onto a wall.
He was a great model. Very muscular. I got the overall gesture with a few light strokes first. Then focused on areas that interested me. Drawing in a life-drawing session surrounded by many other artists isn’t a great place to produce ‘masterpieces’, in my opinion. But it’s a great place to learn figure drawing.
A Seven Life
This drawing was done on a Fashion Night sketch class. Understanding human anatomy helps immensely with drawing clothed models. Clothes hang from supports – draw the supports and the fold lines on the clothes that emanate from the supports. Study of folds can be daunting but this is where ‘draw what you see’ triumphs ‘draw what you know’ – at least, in my case. The dress on this model was reasonably tight – making it easier to draw. Not many folds to ‘analyze’.
Head Five – Detail
This was a quick gesture drawing. I enjoy drawing really dark from the get go – which isn’t a great way to start a ‘successful’ drawing. One can’t really undo the mistakes done with dark charcoal. Usually, if the light charcoal line isn’t in the right place, one can go back and draw a darker line next to it to ‘fix’ the light charcoal line. The darker line gets all the attention and the light line gets lost. But if all the lines are really dark, and a mistake is made – no escape but start on a fresh paper. So, be careful when you are using 6B charcoal sticks/pencils.
And I call any drawing that achieves one’s intent as a successful drawing. That implies that one is able to do a good drawing through intent – not by accident. Usually, I know exactly how a drawing is supposed to come to light in my mind but, often, my hand doesn’t obey my mind and the result is a bad drawing on paper