Light and Dark

My first attempts at sketching/life-drawing with pen nibs and india ink, and trying to include more definite values as quick as possible.

I'm really excited to try these techniques again!

(3 hour life drawing session)

Found Sketches

Some old stuff from years past when I used to draw exclusively in pen:

Stalker

A small test sketch trying out some copic markers.

About 2 hours.

First Kill

A sequential pen sketch of a scene from a story I've been working on for years now. The main character is battling a creature with very stretchy skin.

This is a rough pen sketch with the creature being a quickly-assembled placeholder for a better-designed creature in a future version. I feel like I've failed in showing a sequential action in a single frame (the rat-thing's head and arm swishing to the right), But I'm pretty happy with the over all feel of all the frames together.

6-10 hours

Problems with Blogger Images

For some reason this layout disables images from being clicked to enlarge, so I'll work to fix it as soon as possible =(

Father's Day- The Man With No Name

A belated Father's Day gift for my cowboy-lovin' great grandpa- started this at 9am this morning and finished at around 3.30pm. Fixed some food, played with dogs, and whatnot in between, so I don't know exactly how long it took.

Here is my workspace (and work in progress). I used a reference still shot from "Fistful of Dollars" and watched the "man with no name" series to keep me focused.

I believe I'm getting the hang of this Conte stuff =D

Life Drawing- African Garb

Trying out Blogger's new layout system. I can't decide whether it's distracting and irrelevant, or if I enjoy seeing my blog a bit more..

Anyways, here's some life drawings from yesterday:

10 minutes-

20 minutes-

40 minutes-

Mr. Gay's Lion Farm

Apparently there used to be a lion farm near Pasadena in the '20s and '30's that was "Disneyland before Disneyland". It would be for me too if I could ride a lion :)

3 hour study from this picture

Long Study- Portrait

2 hour portrait in charcoal. I'm happy with this one =)

Sketch Dump- Old stuff

Still in a major artistic funk.. hopefully posting this old stuff will get the ball rolling in my mind:

A few of the better pages from my sketchbook from Viscom-

Ghosts of the Mesa- I was trying to convert a black and white sketch into a fully rendered painting, but ended up losing the essence of the whole thing.

A couple weapon study speedpaints:

and a logo I experimented with:

No Vision

I'm in a weird artistic funk at the moment. I feel like I can't visualize or imagine what I want to create, so without a direction in my mind, there is no direction with my hand. I'm feeling really down about it; I've never been this unable to draw in my life and it feels like I've lost one of my senses.

I'm going to post the little sketches I make throughout the day. They're nothing good, but I'd like to show myself that I've at least done something, even if it's just a scribble.

Sooo... brace your eyes for some ugly ;-P

Birthday Sketches

Quick studies of some cousins and brothers at my little cousin Jessica's birthday (and a tag to fill in space from my brother Chris).

Busted Wacom

I think it's the pressure sensor in the pen.. will update when it's fixed!

SpeedPaint #4

I've been getting behind on this speedpaint business!

Japanese family armor, 1 hour.

Observations- Tanuki

It's been an incredibly busy past few days so I don't have so much as a quick sketch to post, but I thought I'd share some interesting findings in my explorations for inspiration on the internet.

This is a Tanuki, the Japanese Raccoon-Dog:

In Japanese culture, you'll often see them interpreted like this:

And yes, those are his gigantic naughty bits.

Japanese lore depicts Tanuki as a shapeshifting and wily spirit with a very unique and disturbing habit of morphing its scrotum into disquises, tools, weapons, blankets, and so forth.

One image series struck me with familiarity. They are a Kage-e (Japanese shadow picture), the picture on the left seeming to be a silhouette of a Goldfish while on the right it is revealed as a tanuki crushing a man with his scrotum.

Two Pokemon references come to mind:

1.) This is most likely where the concept for the commercial break indicator "Who's that Pokemon?" originated.

2.) This was undoubtedly (in my mind) the direct inspiration for the second generation Pokemon Sentret.

Separated at Birth?

What can I say.. Inspiration is everywhere, I guess? I think it's pretty amazing that someone took a cultural item that was totally indigestible by Western culture and morphed it into something suitable for five year olds.