A few years ago I shot a few rolls of film depicting some of my relatives in customized action poses. It was fun sketching thumbs and having them act out scenes for my future reference. They prints have been in a photo album, largely unused… until now! Enter the new category “Action Sketches”. Here’s the first one done in Photoshop in under 5 minutes.
I’m going to refine this when I get the time: either Vector or hand-inked I haven’t decided yet.
I have a lot of stories bouncing around in my head. I usually try to jot them down immediately in a nearby sketchbook for later development. Sometimes they become a poem, a song, a short story, an illustration, or comic. In this case, I created a storyboard for a short film (could live action, could be animated). I had alot of fun working on this idea. It has a wide range of emotions and some nice acting moments. It works great in pantomime. It’s also the first time I’ve used a female protagonist. Enjoy.
Tooling around with a story idea, I sketched a few versions of Sarge. I like this one soI thought I’d walk through some digital inking, coloring, and texturing. For those of you with military knowledge, the uniform is a total fantasy based on poorly remembered war movies and cartoons (mind you own beeswax.) Real research to follow.
Yesterday a friend invited us over to pick blackberries. I ended up sketching some flowers and plants in her backyard. I was promptly loaded up with clippings from a variety of plants to take home with me. One flower (whose name I don’t know) had petals with a vibrant, nearly flourescent blue-purple. I boiled some of them to make a thin ink. I also made some 2 strengths of Blackberry ink and used some of my morning coffee to round out my pallete.
Sketching a quick composition of some leaves from a Bleeding Heart plant, I just began layering the drawing from light to dark with my natural pigments. I did add a little baking soda to the various mixtures since I don’t know what the pH values were and I didn’t want any acids eating into my sketchbook paper too soon (I have no idea if my logic is sound from an archival perspective, but I know that coffee is acidic so a base should neutralize it , right?).
I mixed linseed oil with the darker blackberry ink so it would stick to my chop.
I also scanned some negative washed paintings of the actual Bleeding Heart leaves that were my model as well as scanning the leaves themselves. I took those and messed around in Photoshop using various blending modes to get the final composition.
Below is the final composition followed by the 4 painting stages:
I volunteered to design a tshirt for my family’s summer reunion. My initial idea was to to set up a campground look with each tent representing the various sub-family groups. I set up an isometric perspective grid. The idea just wasn’t working. So I changed gears.
Concept 2 depicts iconography from the various states-of-origin for the participants. They’re assembled in a whimsical collection of floating islands joining together, a visual definition of a reunion.
As is often the case, I like my sketches more than the final which I composited in Photoshop then redrew and tweaked in Illustrator. Since I have the illustrator files, I may do a colored version for fun at some future date. The tshirts will be a single-color silk screen so I had to work out how the lines and closed negative space would interact with the shirt color.
On Memorial Day I went to a nearby lake. There were a couple of hundred people who had the same idea and their various activities provided ample opportunity to sketch lots of quick poses.
I was doodling around and thought it would be funny to see Green Ghost in Iron-manish armor.
I had the fantastic opportunity of having a dead adolescent (Stellars Jay, I think) bird end up in front of my house. It must have been a recent mishap since the body wasn’t decayed and was relatively whole. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity for some up-close study of avian anatomy, I did these quick pencil and watercolor studies.
Probably the greatest discovery for me was to find that the birds rear-projecting claw is in the same position relative to the human thumb. I guess cartoon drawings of birds leave the impression that 3 claws project forward and one projects backward, diametrically opposite the middle front-facing digit. Actually, the back claw is what your thumb would be if you sliced the tissue separating your thumb and index finger all the way to were your thumb connects to the wrist bone, then bend the whole thing back. Amazing!
If you’ve read enough of my posts you’ll know that my #1 favorite sketching/inking tool is the fabulous Niji waterbrush pen (thank you Satoshi for introducing us over a year ago. Our feelings for one another grow deeper with each passing sketch). I currently have 3: My original which is my watercolor workhorse, #2 which is filled with Rapidograph Black India waterproof ink, and #3 which has yet to be put into use (#1 is getting worn out due to using it on some unkind paper so it may become my texture/fill in brush).
Since the ink tends to eventually build up (splaying the bristles like any brush and ruining the point), I decided one day to see if I could disassemble the thing and give it a good cleaning. I was a bit nervous because the 3 brushes I have were hard to come by (I know I could order them online but where’s the fun in hunting?) and I didn’t want to damage my much loved Nijis.
Happily the operation has been successful on both active brushpens and each time (especially with #2 ) I’ve noticed a clear improvement in performance, for example the worriesome ink flow increase diminished and I no longer had to worry about wrecking a nice line with a pool of black). Here is a photo showing how the brush comes apart and a few bits of advice.
Happy cleaning.
