So a friend convinced me to participate in the 24 hour comic marathon. I decided to use it as an excuse to spend 24 hours getting a bunch of work done on Green Monk. I started at 10 am and planned to do a panel an hour for a total of 24 panels, but ended up finishing everything by 10 pm that evening.
Not feeling the urge to do 24 more, I decided to pat myself on the back and get a good night's sleep.
I'll post some of the Green Monk panels in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here are some pictures from the event:
Rob Whitaker praying for our souls.
Facing off against Xavi:
The last panel of the evening:
Congratulations to all the real troopers that stuck it out all night. This was the half way mark for them, but it was bed time for me.
Funny thing about drawing all day is that it actually put me in the mood to do more drawing the next day. This is what I did this morning:
Okay, after my dissatisfaction with a forest I drew for Green Monk the other day I decided to study some forests by Jeff Smith and Claire Wendling and to see if I could get a better hang on this forest thing.
Here are my first few attempts:
What I noticed about Jeff Smith is that he defines the masses of leaves in a general way, but tries to be specific with the edges of those forms.
He also does a good job of separating the background from the foreground by giving the foreground greater detail and dealing with negative space wisely and consistently. In other words if the gaps between trees are dark, masses in the foreground should be light. In the sketch below I tried to play with the reverse of that idea. Negative spaces are light and the background and foreground is darker. Kind of like a silhoutte. I could have done much more with value on the forest floor.
So I was kind of happy with these first three sketches, but I still felt like that they were a bit generic and that the forms were too flat. So this next sketch I wanted to make the forms stronger, and the designs more unique and interesting. I was pretty happy with how they turned out.
So to summarize what I learned about drawing forests:
1. Think in terms of large general shapes including the mass of leaves.
2. Define the edges of the leaf masses with the details.
3. Give the masses organic form. Use detail and shadow to define how they wrap around and layer on top of one another.
4. Give the foreground more detail, the background less.
5. Be consistent with how you draw attention to the foreground and punch out negative shapes in the background.
6. Make the design interesting (like real nature).
I have more practice to do. The first couple of sketches look more and more primitive the longer I study them.
Oh yeah, I also drew this sketch last night:
Here's the latest on what I'm working on for this Saturday:
I haven't yet decided if I'm going to do it as a screen print or paint it up with more shadows and texture and stuff. I guess it'll depend on whether or not I have the time to do the screen printing.
For those of you in the Salt Lake area, I'm participating in an arts and crafts show featuring local Utah artisans and stuff. It'll be a great place to pick up that unique Christmas gift!
Here's a preview of something I'm working on, in all its smeary col-erase beauty:
As promised, here's the rest of the sketches. See if you can identify the theme here.
Here's my impression of micron pens trying to look like a brush:
Real color brush here.
The next three sketches here I did after studying cartoons by Maurico García Castro (also known as Fantasio) and George Ludway. One thing they are very good at is drawing female curves with subtetly. I tend to exaggerate the curves when I study their stuff.
You can find plenty of examples of their works at Shane Glines's Cartoon Retro, along with a massive archive of other brilliant illustrators and cartoonists that you'll be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Certainly worth the $50/year membership fee.
I think I want to finish this one up:
I want to finish up the one below too. I think I'll add a big cat in the background.
So there you go, a whole bunch of different girls, a whole bunch of different approaches. Let me know what works for you and what doesn't.
Finally got around to coloring an old drawing.
Here it is. I was trying for more of an animated look this time.
I just finished watching Justice League Unlimited last week. Great Stuff. Here's a WIP on Wonder Woman:
The onlly thing I'm thinking of fixing right now is the face. It got too cute as I was tightening it up. I'd like it to look more sophisticated.