A few weeks ago I spent an hour or so painting gesso onto various pages in different sketchbook. I wanted to provide a ground for gouache, pastels, acrylic or other media. I also wanted to prevent these media from bleeding through the paper to other drawings and sketches.

This is a oil pastel drawing of a finch that I scanned through a sheet of wax-paper, color adjusted in Photoshop, then played around with the filters until I got an effect that I liked (and effectively masked my deficiencies as a master of oil pastel).

I also got to apply my Chinese chop that I scanned a couple months back for just such a purpose. It seemed to lend itself well to the subject matter. am happy to apply it to my digital work.

Geek Date Tier 2

Here’s the second row of my Geek Date one-page story. I was a slight bit nervous about inking the background on the car panel since I’m still working out how to create convincing backgrounds. I hadn’t even finished all of the pencilling so some of the background was created on the fly. Overall I’m happy with the results I achieved with the dip pen and washes.

I continued the sparse Photoshop coloring to add focus to the images.

One funny note, I almost flipped the car scene in Photoshop so the car would direct the readers eye to the bottom left panel (the ones coming next) and help the visual flow. Then I realized that flipping the car would flip the driver too putting him on the British side of the road . . . and I don’t live in England . . . It worked out okay though because I realized that he composition is tilted down/left anyway even though the action is moving right.

Gouache Painting

I’ve been seeing a lot of gouche illustrations, particularly on Pixar peeps blog. I remembered that I had inherited some tubes of the stuff from my sister-in-law, who is a pretty amazing illustrator. I also saw a series of book illustrations by Belle Yang at the Monterey art museum a few weeks ago. The brilliant, matte colors of her paintings were very exciting and inspiring.

I spent some time applying gesso to pages in some of my sketchbooks (I’ve got about 7 or 8 going at various stages of use) so the gesso wouldn’t interact negatively with the existing sketches.

Since I’m not exactly sure how to approach gouche from a technical standpoint, I just jumped in using a character from my Labsquad project. I mainly used a pointed round watercolor brush and worked in shapes with minimal (intentional) blending.

If anyone has pointers or knows of a good resource on how to effectively mix, apply and utilize gouche, I’d appreciate the help. I have a limited palette of colors (all in the warm end) so I colorized the final painting in Photoshop with a gradient overlay.

Sketchcrawl across the street

I took my 2 oldest progeny on a mini sketchcrawl literally across the street. There are some lovely and fragrant vine-growing flowers on our neighbors fence.

Good ol’ watercolors and brushpen with brushed uniball accents.

Panel from Geek Date

I drew a one-page sequential story a few years ago entitled “Geek Date. Coming across the piece in one of my sketchbooks recently I decided to redraw and ink with pen and brush. Here is panel one from the story both before and after inking.

I used a dip pen, Higgins Black Magic, and a 78¢ brush I bought at an art store in Monterey. It’s a Japanese Style brush with a loose point and rough bristles that are wearing out pretty quickly, but it is very easy to clean and I kind of like the rough (and somewhat unpredictable) line it gives. You’ll notice that I don’t use straight-edges of any kind. This is partly due to laziness, partly due to lack of skill, and a smidgeon due to that fact that I like rough lines. I let the thin, dip pen lines say “artificial” rather than razor-straight lines. It also makes the inking process less of a chore.

I read in the back of Doug TenNapel’s collected “Gear” that inking for him is his favorite part since he is so loose and organic. He uses rough brushwork in his stories and it adds so much energy and character to the narrative. Clearly, I’m not there, but I think having the freedom to be messy can bring joy and life into what can sometimes be a tedious process.

A word about the coloring: I decided to use color to accent the storytelling rather than colorize the entire story. In the panel the main character is colored to give him focus as well as the sky outside the office building which connects to the characters blue shirt and hints to the fact that something is drawing him away from his work.

Braveheart Montage

I popped Braveheart into my computer and began sketching. Initially I was just going to knock out some quick gestural and shape sketches, but when I started drawing the goat and then the young William’s face, I began working with value.

I used HB and 2B pencils, just what was within arms length at the time, though I wish now I would have gotten up to get a 4 or 6B. The king (bottom left) and burial scene (bottom) were excercises with subtractive drawing with my Magic Rub eraser (again, a kneaded would have been handy for some of the spot highlights that the dulled corners of the ‘Rub couldn’t make).

I gave it a conté crayon tint photoshop when I scanned it.

One thing I’m proud of, the right eye of the princess was initially misdrawn. The face looked horrible. I was about to just shrug it off since the eye looked nice by itself. Instead, I gulped, erased the eye and redrew it. The result is much better. Personal quality control is the best kind.