Friday, March 4, 2011

Drawing is hard

Trying out some new brushes for inking. Opened up flickr to get some inspiration, and one of the first images was my buddy Eric, making a weird face. I didn't do a very good job of conveying his expression, but it's something like...slightly comical thoughtfulness. Something that is always kind of difficult for me is capturing the angle of someone's gaze. For example, here it looks like Eric is looking directly at the camera, but in the original photograph, he's looking slightly up, as if he is thinking, or in mid-eye-roll.

Also, you might notice that the whole thing looks slightly stretched, vertically. It's because I was seated back in my chair as I drew it, so I was looking at the paper from an angle as I drew. When I finally moved to a position where I was looking directly down at the drawing (too late to start over, of course), I realized it was a little funhouse-mirrored. This happens to me way too often.

Ink in sketchbook; tinted in Photoshop

Venom!


Wow...going through some stuff in my studio and I ran across this 10-year-old drawing I did of Venom, for a long-since abandoned project I was working on with these weird guys I met...well, it's a long story, but I will say that the concept was a book of poetry based on Marvel characters. Apparently Marvel had some interest! Although, I never saw any proof of this. Anyway, the idea here is that the alien symbiote, Venom, chooses a human host from his closet, much as a human might choose an outfit. Ooh, spooky. I was really trying to shoehorn my style into something Marvel might publish. It's always sort of weird to see myself drawing like this. I'm not sure I have the guts to post my drawing of Wolverine cutting paper dolls...

Dancing Dinosaur


More sketchbook stuff. Ink and watercolor.

Evil Valentine


Detail from the sketchbook. Ink, watercolor, and gouache.