One of the James Gang

I may have mentioned this before but I was never a "western" kind of guy. I don't think I'd even seen a western movie until "Silverado" came out, and I didn't see any after that until "Unforgiven." But a couple years ago I started listening to the "Gunsmoke" radio shows (broadcast in the 50's-- before the T.V. show came on) and I picked up a couple of Moebius' translated-to-english "Blueberry" comics. "Gunsmoke" is now just about my all time favorite radio show, and Moebius' "Ballad for a Coffin" is one of my favorite comics EVER!

Since then I've been on a western spree. Louis L'Amour, Spaghetti westerns, other radio shows... can't get enough.

And, of course, I'd like to make some western doodles that look like I know what I'm doing. I've been studying books about the old west, gunfighters and trains in an attempt to reach a certain level of visual knowledge with the hope that I can create a few decent images of my own.

So far the stuff I come up with on my own looks pretty crummy. Every time I draw a bad western picture out of my head, I force myself to do 10 push ups and then draw something from reference. This way, someday, I will be a truly mighty western artist. Or, more likely, my arms will be too tired for me to draw anything.

This is my tired-arms western drawing for today. I will not show the really bad one I did before this.

The End

3 comments:

  1. Don't be too hard on yourself. This is really nice . Has that vintage portrait look.
    Never was much of a 'Western' guy my self when I was a kid but now I can see flicks like the Wild Bunch, Pale Rider , The Good The Bad the Ugly etc ...... again and again and still enjoy them. The Searchers ( John Wayne) is on my list of films to see, as is the Australian western The Proposition.

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  2. Say, Dominic! I recently saw TheGood Bad Ugly thing, and it was awesome. Went and picked up Fist Full of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, too and they're just as good.

    Once Upon A Time in the West is my favorite so far, though-- one of my all-time favorite movies! Henry Fonda as a low-down dirty-dog bad guy? The meanest bad guy in movie history, I think! And Claudia Cardinale gets my vote for hottest babe in a western movie EVER! Good actress, too.

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  3. Yeah, Once Upon a Time In The West is a classic too. It was the first western Leone actually filmed in the U.S. The music ( Ennio Morricone ) in all those Leone films is brilliant too.

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