Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Waste Not....



I hate being wasteful. Whether it be food or supplies. That's why when i found some old Pastel Paper in my office, i decided to give it a second chance at becoming something more. I grabbed the first sheet and cut it into smaller pieces (for easy transport) and decided to draw this at home.

Just some things to keep in mind when viewing this: It was realllly late and i was drawing in the dark by the light of my monitor (don't ask!). I drew something really quickly in normal #2 pencil and used my trusty Itoya to ink it. Filled in the black with Sharpie and used a White-Out Correction Fluid pen to create the outline. Looking back, i think i would have preferred to use a Prismacolor White Pencil as it would generate cleaner lines but i'll try that next time.

If you look closely at the hand that is holding the pencil, you may find that it looks a bit odd. Well, since i was drawing in near darkness, i added one too many fingers. I fixed it in Photoshop. You can't tell but i also started to block in the black with a chisel point marker but the results were horrendous so i switched to the Sharpie which was faster and much more uniform. Well, the purity of the two blacks were not the same so i adjusted them to make them more uniform. And that's the extend of my computer alterations....honest! :)

I really liked the way this came out looking and may try more adding some other tools to my repertoire. I was greatly inspired by the art of Wade Schin. I bought his sketchbook and was floored by how such simplistically created art could look so full of depth. Google him and check out his work.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Simple Women


Simple women?? Isn't that an oxymoron? Just kidding (kind of). Anyway, this is the second half of those quick women drawings in an earlier post. I warmed up a bit then moved onto these. Each was drawn with the small wedge side of a calligraphy pen. Each stroke was meant to be quick and deliberate. You'll probably see lots of small mistakes but you have to keep in mind that this set was meant more for an exercise than anything else.

I really liked the way the blue one came out probably because the color acts more as an accent rather than an integral part of the art. Again, remember i only have a few Copic markers so you'll see a lot of blondes with green eyes. Maybe i'm just a sucker for them, haha. This whole set probably took me only 20 minutes and that includes looking for reference photos.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Happy Birthday....meh!



So this past Sunday was my new boss' birthday. A card was passed around in the beginning of the week and i was lucky enough to be the second one to get my hands on it. This meant that i had ALL this free space to play around with. I figured i'd do something a little more thoughtful than just writing "Happy Birthday" so i dress a pic.

I penciled it fairly quickly then inked it with an Micron pen. Then i used two gray Prismacolor markers to shade it. The markers are great for quick values (can't say it enough)! It should be noted that this drawing is about 1.5" tall. Pretty darn small but i was able to get a decent result anyway. If the card were on white instead of yellow, i might have added color but....well, it wasn't.