I took my family to the Lindsey Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek today. It’s a great place for drawing animals, especially raptors. I was able to get much closer to the animals than I normally can at the zoo. It’s also a lot smaller and lower key than the zoo. Definitely a place to return to at a future date.
I used my trusty Windsor Newton travel watercolor kit, my Niji waterbrush pen, and my Le Plume brush pen (for the Harris’s Hawk).
I pulled out my lightbox. I don’t often use it but I know it’s a vital tool for a lot of artists and, specifically, comics professionals.
The benefit of the lightbox to me is clear: since the basic composition has already been worked out, my attention is geared on refining, cleaning and detailing without distraction. In the past I have sped over background details, but with the lightbox, it’s like coming to a fresh drawing instead of feeling like I’m beating a dead cat.
I went ahead and scanned the page in, cleaning it up a bit in Phostoshop. I’m going to print out another copy to either : 1) clean up still further, 2) use as a basis for hand-inking 3) practice ink 4) some combination of the above. I think I’ll also take one of the panels and do some digital inking, for practice and comparison.
Here is a page of a story I’m developing in a, shall we say, organic way
I began drawing in one of my 9×12 sketchbooks at some point in the past, but never finished laying out all the panels (even now one is in the process of being finished). I decided to go ahead and sharpie-ify/brushpen the finished panels. I wanted to add a mid-tone so I pulled out one of my trusty, nearly-out-of-ink, markers. It gave a nice dry-brushed, 20% black look.
I then scanned the page and blew it up to 11×17 (ish).
I’m not really a cat person, but I speed sketched these 6 cats in about 25 minutes, going for a variety of designs and attitudes.
Here’s a quick little sequential page I did in Illustrator featuring one of my Labsquad characters-Bunsen. I roughly sketched on a half-sheet, scanned and then went to town. I primarily used brush and pencil tools. I did use the ellipse tool a few times, but I attempted an organic look versus a smooth vector style. The fact that I can’t angle the page (like you can in Painter or in Photoshop with actions) adversely impacts my ability to make smooth and clean lines. Because of this bummer of a reality, I’ve decided to embrace the clunkiness and see where it takes me instead of developing an ulcer.
I was looking for something to paint and saw this strawberry. I placed it on a bowl and instantly attracted the attention of my son who began to persistently inquire about the availability of the strawberry for consumption. After he had devoured the better part of the hapless berry, I decided to document the carnage.
Warming up for next weeks’ Sketchcrawl. These are quick studies of my kids and Nana enjoying the perfect weather today.
I wanted to do a completely digital illustration. I sketched the rough out using Illustrators brush with a low opacity to simulate a HB pencil. Then I began building the shapes. In retrospect, I should have worked out the composition and elements more. There are definite areas where I rushed.
After importing the image into Photoshop, I applied a radial gradient set to multiply, and created an alpha channel-based blur to add focus. Then I started playing around with textures, masks, and transparency options. The final piece is much moodier and chiaroschuro-ish. My wife convinced me to go with an overlay setting that popped some of the gumdrops on the path while simultaneously darkening the trees.
