Drawing From Life

I started working with a live model today. This drawing (done on an ipad) is not very good but I hope to improve with practice.

The model is Miss Evelyn Beatrice Durham and she's brand new at this, too.

As I finished the drawing, I looked up and saw that it was 2:04 pm. Precisely one day and two minutes after she first made the scene.

The End.

No, wait.

A Beginning!

 

Testing Paper and Blogsy

Testing an ipad drawing app and also a blogging app.

Does this work?

 

The End

 

Quick Little Painting

Completed several errands today, cleaned up around the house, took care of a few monotonous chores, and made a huge chunk of progress on a very depressing project for work.

Rather than go to bed with only drudgery and sorrow in Tuesday's wake, I found a picture I took of my wife last Christmas and did a hasty study.

Painted in photoshop at a very low res, so that I couldn't fuss and make it last too long. About 25, 30 minutes.

Time for bed!

Facebook Bootcamp

The distinguished Charles Apple wrote a very kind post over on his blog that includes my latest illustrative effort for The SJ Merc, Oak Trib, CCTimes and all those other SF Bay Area papers I work for.

I intended to write a longer post focusing on the drawing process – roughs, refinement, coloring, all that – but I haven't had the time. And the forecast for today and tomorrow is busy, busy, busy. I may not get to it for weeks!

So, rather than let the fizz fade entirely before posting the picture, I offer it now with the half-hearted promise of a mildly interesting and chatty update featuring a slew of scribbly, unfinished, unrefined drawings. Yeah! Can hardly wait!

Props Of Unusual Size to Mike Swift for the story and to Alex Fong for art direction, critical input and making sense of it all. As always, the people I work with make me feel like I get to do the easy part.

To be continued . . . ?

Junky Little Drawing

Started this drawing a month or so ago. I set it aside, unfinished. Forgot about it.

Found it this morn. I tidied up the background, started to try to fix the bike, but decided it wasn't worth it. Wrote a couple of balloons and dropped them in there to make it look there's more going on than there is. So, here you go.

Drawn in Photoshop.

The font is called Joe Kubert, based on the hand-lettering of the great cartoonist. He's definitely one of my top-five all-time favorites and if I can't draw as well as he can then I'm at least going to steal his wonderful lettering.

I bought the font from Comicraft. Highly recommended.

Managing Social Media

I like how this one came out. It was fun!

I had a struggle at the beginning when trying to create a funnel in Illustrator using the 3D tools. That didn't go well. I never came close to making an image that looked like a funnel. I've got deformed bowling pins, but no funnel. So, I abandoned the vector approach for the comfort of simple photoshop cartooning.

And the lady originally looked like this. Not a very appealing character.

And here is how it looked in the paper. The color printed nicely!

That's it for today!

The End.

Fugitive Baboons, Swanky and Intimidating in Their Barfly Overcoats

This is the only drawing in an ancient sketchbook I rediscovered in my files. I posted the cover yesterday.

If you have but one drawing in a sketchbook, then this is the one you want.

Dude, stream-of-consciousness poetry about baboons, bus station watchdogs and loan shark feeding time. It's rad.

Then there's that cool super dense cross-hatchery, weird-ass cartoonery and I bet you can't count how many of those little circles I drew.

So, April is National Poetry Month? Here's my entry. I think I just won that freakin' thing.

The End

Cover of an Old Journal, Personal Artifact of Great Significance

I found this thing, moments ago, in an old portfolio I haven't opened in a decade or so. This is about 17 or 18 years old.

It is a colored pencil and acrylic effort, on a piece of bristol board paper. I took a short stack of 11x17 paper, folded it in half and made a journal out of it.

True to form – I have trouble keeping a regular sketchbook – I painted the cover, did one drawing on the second page and then never used it again.

BUT! You know the coolest thing about this unfinished sketchbook? 

Page three, down in the right hand corner, has but one graffito, and it's the spot where my wife wrote down her phone number the first time I asked her out.

Aww.

The End