Scribbles and Scribings

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is something I’m having trouble relating to lately, because mine is totally shot. I would have spent more time on the drawing but I really needed to get back to this part of my routine: my exercise routine.  No, I’m not trying to kick the TV in… this morning it was my Kathy Smith Kickboxing video, one of my faves. So just a quick scribble for this week, scanned right out of the sketchbook (tho I did take the time for a quick pencil under-drawing before the inks!) Click the image to enlarge it.

I started exercising relatively recently and it still amazes me how much better it makes me feel sometimes. And yet it’s the first thing to drop off my schedule when things get busy…

A slightly surreal image for this week’s Illustration Friday topic. When I thought of the idea it was a bit more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek, but I only had a couple hours to work on it and this is what came out instead. Click the image to enlarge it.

This drawing and the one before were done on sheets of drafting vellum — an almost-transparent paper with a fairly slick surface, almost plastic-like. It’s very prone to smudging so it forces a light, quick touch. I experimented with it a while ago and it makes for really crisp lines. but I find it difficult to scan; the transparency means the ink lines tend to cast a shadow behind them on the scanner which is hard to remove without obliterating the finer lines. I suppose a film scanner might solve that problem, but it’s easier just to use another medium instead.

Since I was rushing, I made a major error in the ink drawing: The shading on the background had the light coming from the opposite direction as the figure in the foreground. I made some halfhearted attempt to fix it on the paper, and then decided that this was what Photoshop is for. I flipped the figure after scanning it (a bit clumsy with the masking, I’m afraid) and voila! Might have worked better if I hadn’t tried fixing it in ink first. It would have been even better if I hadn’t made the mistake in the first place!

Alas, I was too late to get this done in time for last week’s Illustration Friday topic, but I had the idea, I wanted to draw it, and once drawn it was darn well getting posted! Click the image to enlarge it.

This was a relatively quick drawing, and I ended up spending more time on the colors than I’d originally intended, guess I got a bit caught up in it and wanted to sail away too.

I’ve been incredibly busy lately — all good, positive things, mind you — but it’s taken away some of the time I use for just daydreaming and letting my thoughts drift away…

Let Me Check My Notes… (click to enlarge)

So many possibilities for this week’s Illustration Friday topic! I decided to go with a post-poof moment this time. I hope the effect comes through ok with only inks, no time for color this week. Or a background!

I think I may be reading too much Girl Genius lately. Last week I lost an evening of productivity when I got book 7, despite the fact that I’d already read it online. I love the humor in the drawings and the writing, but there’s also an intriguing mystery afoot with lots of interesting characters. Phil Foglio has a great loose style that just works, with tons of little extra details hidden in the background. I deliberately avoided too many stylistic swipes in the finished drawing, but the influence is obvious in my thumbnail sketches:

Interesting (or not) trivia factoid: these sketches were done in the dentist’s chair while waiting for the Novacaine^TM to kick in. The note in the corner was a leftover snippet from a trip earlier this year, and in no way intended to be a slur against taxis in general.

PS: More mad-science-y fun can be had at Narbonic… another clear influence at work here which I will have to re-read when I have a week free sometime…

I got a little overly-ambitious with this week’s Illustration Friday topic, so the drawing is still only at the sketch stage, but I was just so tickled by the idea I couldn’t help myself! (Plus some of my drawing time was eaten up by the arrival of the new Girl Genius book…) Who wouldn’t like to have a pantry full of canned gremlins, bottled genies, and vacuum-packed-pixies. Even I don’t know what she’s got in some of those jars… but she’s clearly been very busy! Click the image to enlarge it.

All of my drawings go through a stage like this: I’m tightening up the composition, working out the perspective, and figuring out as many of the details as I can in pencil so that when I get to the inks I can just concentrate on building textures with the ink lines. Thanks to my light table I can scribble as much as I want with the pencil and not have to worry about marring the surface of the paper for the inks. Sometimes I’ll paste in elements or photocopy them and move them around until I’m happy, or use an overlay of tracing paper to establish the shading and lighting without obliterating the linework — some drawings have so many layers of tracing paper on the sketch they become difficult to transfer over to bristol for inking. Right now I’m thinking I need to do something else with the lower left corner before it’s ready (maybe move the edge of the table? Or maybe that little guy in the front needs a buddy…) but I’ll have to sleep on it.

Gonna try and finish the inks over the weekend, I’ll post them as soon as  I can!

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is a tricky one for me — I was stumped for something metaphorical, and I haven’t drawn atmospheric effects in a while. Then I remembered this old image which I made a while back for a school project but never really felt happy with. Just add fog: Viola! It’s not perfect, but I think it helped give the picture the depth it was lacking before. Doesn’t do anything for the figures, unfortunately!  Click the image to enlarge it.

The character is from a story rattling around in my head. She’s slipped out in bits and pieces of prose over the years, one of these days she’ll escape entirely…
The drawing itself is from several years ago, when I was still developing my current method of coloring. It’s fascinating to me sometimes to look at how I used to structure my files.  It seems like every few years I change my tactics. I guess it’s partly an evolution of my method, and partly due to the relentless march of software upgrades. (I always seem to switch the way I organize my file archives every few years too… amazing how something that made perfect sense five years ago can seem silly now! )

Last weekend I attended the Illustration Conference in NYC. The whole weekend was exhausting, but a total blast! I met so many fellow illustrators from all over — from those just starting out to those who’ve been in the business for years, and those who are transitioning out of (and into) illustration to/from related fields. There was a fair amount of business talk and shop talk, but there was so much creative energy and talent on display  it was practically crackling through the air. I had the chance to share portfolios with some amazingly talented artists.

I came back home re-energized and full of ideas! Being a compulsive note-taker I did more writing and looking than sketching at the conference, but there are a few scribbles scattered around my notes.

I didn’t have a chance to participate in the big SketchCrawl that preceeded the main conference, but I heard so much about it, it’s an idea I’m definitely going to have to explore. The man who spearheads it, Enrico Casarosa, really hit the nail on the head when he talked about carrying your sketchbook everywhere but never taking it out of your bag.

The conference itself took place in a hotel in Manhatten, but I was crashing at my brothers’ apartment in Brooklyn. I found that the fastest way to make the train show up was to settle in for a really detailed sketch of my surroundings. But I managed to snag a few informal sketches along the way.

 Of course, as is the case after every conference I’ve ever been to, I’ve come down with a nasty head cold. This one totally snuck up on me Tuesday afternoon, when I thought I was “safe,” so I’ve barely had a chance to go through everything I brought back with me, much less e-mailing all the wonderful people I met… but I will! But not right now… this is the most I’ve been upright since the cold hit me and it’s time to lie down…

This week’s Illustration Friday topic was a tricky one! I tried to remember what it felt like to taste the most sour thing I’d ever tasted… click the image to enlarge!

Our little cat used to pounce the big cat all the time. It really confused him, he wasn’t sure what to make of this little monster almost half his size. These days it’s just as likely that he deliberately sits right in front of her twitching his tail like a lure to provoke a wrestling match which he is sure to win. I get far too much entertainment in the morning watching them face off like a pair of wrestlers, paws outstretched, each waiting for the other to make the first move. (Hint, it’s usually the little one!)

This is a super-quick scribble for this week’s Illustration Friday topic. I’m not very happy with it and wish I had something better to post right now (one of those times when I totally failed to capture the pencil sketch in the inks and need to redraw it) but there’s no time: I’m getting ready to go to ICON5 tomorrow! It was very last-minute, so I couldn’t get away from work in time for today’s sketchcrawl, but I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll have some better sketches to post when I get back!

Ever since we got our second cat, it seems like she always is the one to end up with all the toys… Just another quicky for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, click to enlarge.

The original drawing is fairly small, about 3-by-4 inches. Oddly, I was doodling my sketches when I realized I was drawing a “horde” instead of a “hoard” and I had to go back and check my e-mail to see which was right. But it gave me an idea for another drawing, which is part of the purpose, right?