Gouache Guardian

This gouache sketch started out as me using up some extra paint by painting an entire page yellow. Once that was done, I sketched a running figure in a funky futuristic armor. I redrew the sketch larger and worked out some details.

After carbonizing the back of the enlarged sketch with a 4B pencil, I traced the drawing with a pen, transferring a light pencil image onto the yellow background.

I inked the drawing with my rapidograph ink-filled Niji brushpen. I then began painting, filling up the inked areas with various colors. They were really bright and obnoxious so I went over them with a muddy red to mute them. I added the highlights with slightly dirty white paint and the shadows with blue. I left the goggles yellow.

In the background I doodled a futuristic city, adding some shadows and  few ink lines. I painting in the ground plane and added orange to the top corners to add focus to the main figure.

I still have paint left over so I began drawing 2…

Jungle Red Line

Sometimes the hardest thing is just to overcome an artistic block or to tackle a project out of the gnawing unease that it won’t turn out as planned. I wanted to draw a sequential page (or more) but the stories that I had in my mental queue weren’t inspiring me to act. I needed something to get the artistic ball rolling so I decided to take a more free-form tack. I drew the first thing that came to mind ( a tropical river ravine ) and asked myself “What next?”. It turns out there’s  a guy in there ready to run and cannonball into the river below. Where did he come from? Why is he there? What happens next? These are all questions to explore. Instant story starter!

Window painting

I wanted to do a goauche painting and found a nice window view to sketch from. I’m really loose in my use of the materials and I hate wasting paint so I try to use my various tiny mixtures through the painting in order to minimize waste. This has the beneficial effect of creating unity. I haven’t been able to find any really excellent books that deal with this medium alone. I’m in awe when I see smoothly and realistically modeled gouache paintings. However, I enjoy flat illustration usage as well.

If anyone knows of any helpful print or web resources drop a comment, per favoré