Life Drawing at Mighty-Good 3/29/14

Here are my Saturday life drawings at Mighty-Good Coffee. It took a month or so, but I've finally found the best place to sit for optimal lurking.

Thank goodness for hipsters with interesting glasses and denim jackets. They're just plain fun to draw. However, his hand was so bad that I've decided to do an intense hand study for a couple of months. (I'll do a separate post on that though).

These are both of the same guy. He must have been working on his thesis, because he was clearly hating life. After drawing him the first time, I was thinking about his eyes. They're a decent short hand, and I don't think that they look bad. However, they're very similar to all of the eyes that I've been doing when drawing from life lately. My subject clearly wasn't leaving anytime soon so I drew him again. This time, I wanted to try using a different type of eye that was more expressive. I don't think it's enough for me to draw a picture of a person that doesn't look bad anymore. I need to start adding feeling and story.

On a side note, I do him a great disservice. He didn't have man-boobs like this in real life. They were the result of an errant mark that I made and liked when I was doing the initial pencil sketch. Sorry moob-man. 

That's it for now. Hand studies and more Spreepo stuff coming soon.

DC, signing off.

Misc. Doodle and Practice

Today is my off day from the gym, so I though I'd post some sample of studies and doodle from the last month or so. I'm plying my skills as an inker at MotorCity Comic Con. So, I did a few practice samples inking with a brush (No. 6) with mouseguard and Out to Sea. Both of which, are great graphic novels. Then some other doodle and side projects.

I was being anti0social at a party and started doodling. I just kept adding smaller and smaller textures until it was time to go home.

My copy of the first pane of Mouseguard from free comic book day last year.

More MouseGuard Practice

My copy from a page of Out to Sea.

The Ink from a poster I illustrated:  Polar Bear Bombardier. 

A Sneak Peak

Here's a sneak peak at the "pencils" for the first 3 panels of the comic teaser that I'm preparing for the Motor City Comic Con. The point of this sequence is to quickly show (and not tell) what kind of person the main character is. As I said, these will serve as the pencils, even though they're done with pen. When all of the pages are penciled, I'll print them on bristol in non-photo blue and ink over them with a brush.

Remember, done is better than perfect.

Life Drawing at Mighty Good: Are you really sucking more than usual today?

Have you ever had one of those days where everything you draw just isn't that good? It doesn't necessarily suck, but it's just not up to snuff. Maybe it happens at the best possible time. Like when you're drawing in front of you friends, or even better, in front of a bunch of curious strangers. It's so tempting to say "I swear I'm good! Or at least, better than this!"

I had a day like that yesterday. It got me thinking about something I had heard in Chris Oatley's ArtCast ( http://chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/ ). Chris Mentioned that students and new budding artists seem to be more afraid of or even paralyzed by failure. 

I admit that I'm guilty of this. It took me a year to get around to drawing a 3 page teaser for my comic idea. All because I knew that if I started right then it wouldn't be good. There is so much to learn right?! I have at least 10 great books about the best way to layout your panels, and another 3 about proper story telling. Oh yeah, then there's that great podcast about character development. Wouldn't it be hasty, or even irresponsible of me to start before I learn all I can about it first?

I think this mindset is a product of two things.

First- There are two types of artistic growth that are necessary to "level up." The first is an increase in skill....duh. Ok, that's a little obvious, but the second is the ability to discern when something is right or wrong. This is analogous to a chef refining his/her palette to detect when flavor of their meal isn't quite there yet. Maybe the soup needs some more salt and a bay-leaf. Or, a musician's ability to detect when they're flat or sharp, or slightly out of time. Artists go through the exact same process. I think the ability to dissect your work is necessary to consistently improve and deliver. The feeling I was having was do to growth in the second type of learning that exceeded my skill in the first.

Second- The internet. Yes, let's blame everything on the internet. My dog sheds everywhere. That's the internet's fault too.

I think that the fear that Chris mentions is a vicious cycle between these two things. The internet is so accessible and chalk full of tutorials that we can research art forever without putting pencil to page. This, in turn, increases our ability to discern good art way above our ability to make it. We'll start a piece and immediately think that it's terrible. So what do we do? Go straight back to the internet, because we haven't learned enough yet to attempt the piece that we started. 

Around and around we go.

So, what should I do to beat this thing? Well, I went to the internet. (Irony noted). Everything I found told me to just do the damn thing no matter what it is. Turn my internal editor off. (He's an ass hole anyway). Looking at art on the internet only increases that second type or skill. Putting pen to paper will increase the first one.

So, here are my life drawings from yesterday. Not perfect, but at least they're done. 

I also have the first page of pencils finished for my comic. I'll throw those up later today and prove that I'm not a total hypocrite. At least, not all of the time.

Sneaky Sketches at MightyGood: Round One

This was a great week for finding new resources for illustration. I stumbled upon Chris Oatley and Noah Bradley's websites and podcasts, which are all about creating comic books and the business of freelance illustration. Many of their talks can be found on youtube as well.
http://chrisoatley.com/
http://www.noahbradley.com/artcamp/
They also both host art schools of their own. One day soon, I'll attend and post about them here.

I also found Will Terrell's youtube channel. Among other things, Will is a fantastic Caricature artist. His channel is filled with great life lessons, art pointers and demos of his own sketchbook. He has a very bubbly personality that is just plain fun to listen to. I couldn't help but to smile.

In one of his videos' he recommends trying out a midtone sketch book. I picked one up yesterday and tested it out by sneakily drawing the patrons at Mighty Good Coffee. It's a great way to unwind before starting your weekend OT.

This man gazes sorrowfully into the distance. They ran out of scones....

This guy was contentedly doing his weekend sudoku.

I'm new to drawing moving targets, but this was a fun exercise. I'm going to do this every Saturday from here on out. I can't wait for the next one.

Squirrels.....as promised

Last week, I mentioned squirrels. Here they are. See? I'm not a liar.

Gouache

Water Color

Ok, so what is this all about? Am I really obsessed with squirrels? Well, there seems to be an army of them taking over this city.

My Studio, ThoughtWell is in the middle of launching our new site complete with an online store. I've been tasked with coming up with a few posters to sell as prints. I've been coloring digitally, and I thought it might be fun to work on tradition methods. Plus, I really would like a physical "thing" to hold when I'm done.

Last week, I posted acrylics and water color, and this week was water color and gouache (not to be confused with gauche!). I chose squirrels because they are quick and easy subjects for color studies.

The prints won't look anything like this. I might post some line work and inking next week.

Que The Montage Music

When I interviewed for the Schoolism workshop in Montreal this summer, I asked Thierry what I should do to prepare. Should I learn photoshop? Study anatomy? What about perspective? How about color theory. He said that the best thing I could do before the workshop was practice painting from life.

I don't really own anything worth painting, so I went and bought some fruit. I've never really worked with water color or acrylics. So, this was a fun little experiment. I will do more of these soon.

This is a pear in acrylic

And an Apple in water color

Coming soon, squirrels.