Man's Face

Just a face, drawn from a photograph from the internet, then painted whichever way. Using blues and yellows, and thinking about light. It's nice painting relatively big things, with sweeps of the hand.

Sketch for a Picture

A sketch for a possible picture. Not sure about the cartoony nose, but that at least takes it out of the realm of pure representation. Whatever that is. Lots of other little pictures today, some of which may show up here, later.

2 Girls

Two faces of girls, from the Six Feet Under DVD set I'm watching now. Struggling with posting whatever it was I was drawing that day, versus only posting the really good drawings. Of course, I'm only doing this for my own thrills. So seeing something new every day is all right.

Bathing Beauty

More of my figure drawing thing. Drawing from photographs is kind of boring. But this became an old-time showbusiness scene.

I think that the figures in back, which I just drew, are tons more natural than the one I painstakingly measured, and copied from a photograph. Not that it's that accurate, mind you.

Floating

Kind of from the Six Feet Under cover, but no red hair.

Sharku and Baldwin

Ready to wreak havoc upon the Hamster Riders of Rohan.

This is a photoshop I made for the people at Ugly Overload. Please go there for the original.

Gouache Girls

Actually, not the latest things I've done. Those are all copies of hands and sailors, and happy children out of the Barbara Bradley book (what about barbarians, and sexy babes, and werewolves? I guess she's saving that for the sequel).

Anyhow, it gives an idea of what Barbara's up against, with her correct proportions, and lines of rhythm, all of that. Ha! I say.

"Drawing People" Arrived

I'm so psyched! I ordered my copy of Drawing People online on Tuesday, 10:30, and got it at my door Thursday at noon! Total cost was 27 dollars and change. That's including delivery, which is still below the Canadian list price of $34.00 Cdn before taxes and whatever shipping.

Above it in this picture is my ancient copy of Figure Drawing for all It's Worth by Andrew Loomis. Still a cool book, though a little outdated in its assessment of the illustration market. It's still in print, and you'll see its poses all over superhero comics and the like.

I'm not really that diligent, else I'd be a better drawer, but picking up something like this, or a new brush or tube of colour, or sketchbook always gives me a boost.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

He's a spy. He's coming in. From the cold. Doesn't look a lot like Richard Burton, but what the hell.

Sweeney Todd

The Demon Barber of Fleet Street! (not the Johnny Depp version, mind you, which came out a year after I did this picture. More based on Len Cariou, who is closer to the "ape-neck Sweeney" of the legend.)

Gangster No. 1

When it's too cold to go outside sketching, I sit inside and draw things, sometimes inspired by movies I'm watching on DVD. Easy to go a bit stir-crazy here. But I'm getting better at painting these things, and quicker.

This is supposed to be David Thewlis and Saffron Burrows from Gangster No. 1, which is an interesting movie with a bad title. Malcolm MacDowell is in it, too, and he deserves his own drawing. It's a British gangster film which tries to tear down the image of the cool gangster. Difficult to do, when you're using cool actors to play your gangsters. But it manages to make a few points about violence and craziness, while basically showing all of that.

Barbara Bradley

While I'm hanging around here thinking about things such as the picture below, let me recommend what seems to be a brilliant art-technique book: Drawing People: How to Portray the Clothed Figure by Barbara Bradley.

I'd browsed through it a year or so ago, but never got the name. Now, I saw it again today, and wrote down the details. Unfortunately, I'm sort of an attention-deficit syndrome person when it comes to working through books or courses, so I'm waiting for it to come up used, but I might even buy it through the net. It would certainly help with my lollipop-head ladies.

Of course, that's all part of my "style," but I'd like to be able to draw perfectly accurately, and then I can mess it up.

Asian Lollipop-Head Girl

Okay, as I promised I wouldn't do, here she is. She looks a little more natural because I fluffed up her hair and gave her shoulders. However, the shading makes her look about 40.

One thing I'm working on is drawing people out of my head, from different ethnic backgrounds, and not making them look stereotypical. I think she looks Korean, because she resembles a Korean woman who works at a local deppanneur (Montreal word for convenience store).

No nice drawings to show. I'm doing tons of sketches on typing paper just to try getting human proportions right. Most of them are nudes, so I don't want to put them up here (trying to keep it a family-looking blog. Oh, all right: [check it out]) and they look like robots, or are even scratchier and sketchier than my usual work. It's using up all that scrap paper I've created while working on the writing project (laser printers are both a blessing and a curse). All of it going to make the art better, I hope.

Afternoon silliness

Had a not very fun couple of days, thanks to a difficult writing assignment. It's what you have to go through if you have two people who need to approve something, with slightly different ideas of what will work. You have to satisfy both at different times, and your work goes all wooooo...

Well, at least it's not for the Discovery Channel. You get three different layers of masters to satisfy. Does that make for good writing? Nope. Not unless you can hit it with your first shot. That feels like a hole in one. Really, it's mostly about me, hating to change something that seemed all right in the first place. And I really don't know how to make it better...

Sometimes the producers have good ideas, however. It's when you can't see where they're coming from that you end up stabbing in the dark, ripping your work's delicate fabric. (oh me, oh my)



Doing all of that, and finishing it, I think, has put me in a giddy mood. I took some snaps of myself, and the sketchbook I recently bought. I'm getting new glasses soon. And I need a haircut.

Other than that, I know people who will never put their picture on the internet, and maybe they're wise. At least less exhibitionist.



This is the first drawing in the new sketchbook. On the inside leaf. I always date these books and put contact info in case I lose one. Got a nice e-mail about the one I left in Thailand, but they want me to come back in person and collect it. That's Thailand for you. Very friendly, but not always cooperative.



Drawing of Russian couple, and awkward horse. This was easier than scanning it, though the blog template doesn't like the size Flickr makes horizontally-oriented photos.

I don't post everything I draw, though sometimes it seems like it. I'm not giving you the Asian lollipop-head girl, for instance.

The photo below is funny. I just noticed how the knight is poking the kitty in the nose. I like to draw and paint sitting on the floor, like a little kid.

Art Guy

Artist guy, cogitating a new masterpiece. His pencils are sharpened by angels, and his paper milled by sylphs.

Europa

Or, "Lady and Bull." This one was tough, because I had to completely repaint the bull to make it show up on my scanner. Looked totally fine in the original before, now it's more slatey-blue. But the computer files are what you send around as an illustrator these days, so I treated it as an assigment that had to come through from my equipment, less than perfect as it is.

My favuorite part is the Gorgon sculpture, which is what looked the worst as the thing was being done. You can never tell. Still, it seems that a painting is never worthwhile unless there's a time when you absolutely give up hope on it, and are ready to call it a "learning experience."

And I do learn a lot from these elaborate pictures, even if I don't know if they're going anywhere, and they're not as salable as my sketchy, brushy cartoons. But learning to paint tough things, such as stone, metal, and white objects, plus whatever that dress is made of, is an interesting challenge. You can either avoid them completely, or risk falling on your face, and maybe solve the problem.

The Assignation

Sometimes you don't pick your friends wisely.

I was sitting in a bar with a friend (that one wisely-picked), drawing, and these two characters came up. Thought I'd try them in colour. Won't complain about my work, but I should try to develop some colour shemes. There are some nice ones, and my chops are getting better. Also some compositions, rather than just drawing a figure, then drawing another, and then deciding something to go in the back.

Rottweiler

Where does that mail box come from? I don't know.

Characters

I don't know. A pile of characters, more or less out of memory. Coachman and horse from my reading a book about Randolph Caldecott, ace Victorian illustrator. The little boy who was worried about whether his sword was good enough from "The Two Towers" movie.

A building I made up. A phallic-looking bicycle post of a type I saw today with the grafitto "Chocolate Inside" written on it.

Don't Fear the Reaper

"Excuse me, there's someone here to see you about the reaping?"

The OId Man

"Pull my finger! PULL MY FINGER, DAMN YOUR EYES!"

What's Wrong With Canadian TV?

Oh dear, I'd better link to this.

Cat and Shoes

Another thrill-packed day.

Powerizer

Fixing the lawnmower. I don't know. Maybe someone other than yours truly is getting a kick out of this (the blog, I mean. I don't even have a lawnmower).

New Year's Day

A pretty time-lapse photo outside my window. This is looking towards the Saint Laurence river. If I'm lucky, and there are no leaves on the trees, I can see the tops of ships moving by almost at the horizon. To the left is a baseball diamond in the summer, hockey rink in the winter. You can hear the echos of slapshots hitting the boards.

That's a schoolyard in front. In the tree at right there's a little dark object: a plastic garbage bag which has been caught in the tree all year, looking like a black bat or large bird. It's my nemesis.

The little bright spots are sparkles from the dirty window. It's very dark now, and the camera on a tripod did a good job of picking up all the light.