Sketchcrawl

Sure, lets meet up with people I don't know and start sketching with them.

Its funny to see how many things there are about art and stuff that I don't know about. Three days ago I discovered sketchcrawl. An event where you meet up with people and sketch an entire day. So I woke up this saterday, and looked out the window. RAIN, WIND, and probably also cold. It was almost enough to stop me from going to the sketchcrawl. Luckily I can be stuborn at certain times. Thus I hop on the train and go for it. I met up with two other people there. Yeah, not everyone else is as stuborn as I. But two fine specimens of the human race it were.

Luckily the weather was better the rest of the day so we didn't have to much trouble sketching.












Well except for that one gallery. We had put ourselves down on a stair, one of those big one's even a horse or three can walk on at the same time. And after about fifthteen minutes or so one of the security chaps pops up and asks if we can stand up. As he said it: "I don't mind you sketching, but you can't sit here." I thought it was hilarious, being "kicked out" so politely.
But luckily it wasn't all woo and troubles. At one point we even were a bit lucky. On the sketch right above here, you can see a man playing on the piano. That was a street musician. I kid you not, that chap had a whole frigging piano on a bike! Rocking our socks of with elvis like songs and other happy tunes. I thought it was amazing and wicked to see that guy play the piano and sing there right in the middle of the street. Pretty good too. This of course created a small crowd which we drew then. Finaly our "models" stopped moving.

So to anyone who ever is going to sketch on streets or in public places, seek out something that draws peoples attention, and they'll be easiers models.

Not the "He's been standing still for five minutes and right when I decide to draw him he moving away again" sort.

Fighting nudity

YOU try drawing a non-phalic cloud in front of that ice golem!

Ever heard of spectromancer? Its some sort of digital cardgame where you use cards with spells or monsters on, to fight your opponent. With each card having its own special tricks, benefits or bad stuff. Quite a fun game to play from time to time and also very inspirational. The game itself has very nice drawings on the cards and that makes it fun to imagine fightscenes with the characters.

The drawing I made for this update has been based on a match I had in that game. Some forest sprites, an ice golem and some wizard with a cloak were in combat. A nice exploitable idea I thought.

This time I didn't sketch on paper. I opened photoshop and started drawing directly on the computer. which helped a bit with the composition, and the sizes of the characters. You see, the green woman and the ice-golem were just as big as that wizard at first, I just resized them afterwards. Its just easier to draw large and resize them smaller after that. Less mistakes & stuff.

One of the problems I had while drawing was the golem. I needed him nude, but didn't want to draw under the belt. I don't want it rated "nude" and then hidden by some moderater. "sure lets hide it with some nicely placed cloud" I thought. And it worked, thank god, but It took me twenty tries or more before I gave up on drawing a curled cloud and just went with the flowy cloud. Cause no matter what I did, the cloud always came out phalic, which was definatly not what I needed in this drawing. Its kind of funny how hard it is not to draw such a shape.

But in the end it turned out splendid, and right now I love the cloud. Its like a ginormous big delicious pudding. Though suddenly I realise that might sound wrong after what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Damn.

The digital sketches

Who needs paper these days?

In these modern days of technology there is this thing called a computer. With its touchscreens/wacom tablets, and most importantly ctrl+Z. At first I wouldn't be able to think of a reason why not to go completely digital with drawings and stuff. But of course good old fashioned paper still has the benefit of the true handmovement, the texture, gravity and unpredictable irl* fysics.

The benefit of going digital is of course that it is very easy to use colors from the start up. But frankly I think that sketching digital is just usefull to get a quick first impression of colors or composition. But definatly not for getting a correct figure out of it. Of course that is just my personal opinion of today, who knows when or if that might change.

Now to compare I got some stuff lined up here. First the original paper work sketches and second the digital sketches. You be the judge. Though its not hard to see I got better results with the papersketches. Though I did cheat a tiny bit on the first papersketch. I gave it a darker layer so the image would be more recognizable. (my scanner is a true pain sometimes)

So my conclusion of this sundays post is very simple, first sketch down a lot of ideas down on paper. Then scan those sketches, and colorsketch them on the computer to get a general idea for color and/or composition. And as a final step, finish it properly! Ah yes that last step is the hardest. I always postpone it to the next day.

*irl = in real life

Replay

I love to keep all my drawings somewhere collected in a folder. Just so I can watch them after a long period and think, "wauw/argh did I draw that!"

So this week there was a folder on my computer that needed my attention. The "still working on it" folder. As the name might make you guess, it is indeed the folder of all pieces that I still havn't finished yet. Be it because I'm lazy, or that they were to hard and I stopped working on them or some other reason.

One of those reasons can be that I put a scan of a painting from years ago in that folder in the hope I get inspired by it to make a new drawing of that one. So this time I found the sketch here on the right. This is something I drew years ago, but the concept was to funny not to use. Besides, now I didn't have to invent a new concept/character/clothes and other stuff.

So its a win win situation. An old drawing gets some new light, and a new drawing will be made. So once I have it finished there is the lovely comparision I can do. Which is one of my weak points maybe. To take old drawings revamp them and then compare how much I have improved over the years/months. Or how little :s

I'm not to sure about the inside of the strawberry, cause I didn't search hard enough for that sort of reference. But I think its close enough. Now, a neat trick I used on this drawing was the leggings or stockings, not sure what the right word is for that piece of clothing in english. But I made a custom brush of the little tatoo on her arm, and then tweeked a bit with the brush options so that in no time I could just draw the texture on the legs in maybe less then a minute. Yay for photoshop on that one.

PS: In case you want a background for this one check these out.

1280 x 800
1024 x 768

Mini comics

Here's something I sometimes do.

Instead of sketching just a figure or an object, it is from time to time interesting to draw a little minicomic. No storyline, just one frame at a time and I'll see where it ends.

They can be short with not real story to it. This one started out with just the frame of the little man dropping down with his parachute. the bullseye beneath him is just where he's going to drop, but I like the idea that it is in another frame, and yet the "him falling" frame is in the "landing frame", so in a way it is one frame, but also portraiting a bit of movement in time.

Then there are just random stories that don't make any sense at all. I started them all with just one frame and continued with the next one without really thinking of any guidelines or storyline.

Yes hugbunnies, thay are very dangerous. Now I'm not sure if the last one is very clear, but they are doing a sport called "kleiduifschieten" in dutch. A sport where they shoot a disk away in the air and then someone shoots that disk.

Mel Brooks made a funny spoof of it with his "history of the world" movie. Definatly check it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk47saogI8o

Bus pirates for the win

It seems to me that these busrides to work are a great time for inspiration. Just like this time again.

So I'm sitting in the bus minding my own busines when suddenly the bus stops at a trafic light. No big deal, but then another bus, coming from the other direction, also stops at that place. So now I'm staring out the window into that other bus.

Preparing to avoid eyecontact with the passengers from the other bus. Cause that is what it turns out to be, two groups of people suddenly forced to either look away or just staaaaare at each other. Frankly option two might be rather fun >:)

But in the end I chose for option three. Just imagine the busses being pirate ships and let the two groups go at it. A first draft on the bus gave me this result.

Sure its a bit "imagine most of it yourself I'm just giving you the basic lines" but it'll do for now.
Cause once I got home I started with the inking and coloring digital. I'm calling it a digiting, you know, like drawing but digital. End result =

That's all for this part, next part will be lotsa sketches again. Somehow I think giving a colored thingy on thursdays and giving sketches on sundays is a fine way to go with this blog. We'll see how it turns out.

Sketches some more

Right now I'm getting this vibe like "I'm never gonna be able to make two updates a week" and "Wouldn't it be to much? constantly updating with only sketches and drawings.

But alas, I have to update, it must be done. I started this with the idea of motivating me to draw more and thus i shall.

During the second part of the week I sketches a bit on the bus and from magazines. So no finished work today. I think I'll keep that for another post.


Ok, this just screams Darkwing duck lookalike. I loved that show. humor action, and just a silly "hero" and even more silly enemies.









And yes that's some sort of cat in a suit shooting a laser from his arm/wrist gunplasma laser gun. Who wouldn't want to have such a thing.

Moving along to the next one, enjoy

Driving and drawing!

What is more dangerous then driving on the road?
Driving and drawing at the same time!

Now, not to worry, I'm not the one who is driving, I leave that to the busdriver. Yeah, no personal driver in a limousine for me, to bad.
But it has a lot of benefits in the long run:
*cheaper
*less stressfull
*you can do something else

The "something else" go's from sleeping and reading to drawing and listening to music. I have spend some time with reading some philosophical book by Fernando Savater, "ética para amador" or as they say in english, "the good life". A great book which you should definatly concider reading.

But this week I didn't read a book, once again my sketchbook presented me with a blank paper that needed to be filled with pencil-matter.

So yeah, I fixed the sketch on the bus and later during lunchbreak I found some time to ink it.

At an art school they might say that you need to use ink, or a special black brush for it.

But in my experience I find that a normal balpoint pen is the best use for me. I like to be in control of my line with every aspect.

By using a brush I am controlled by the shape of it, and with the special black ink pens I always need to change pens if I want a thicker line. Therefor I'm going with the normal balpointpen, which gives me a rather good manipulation on the thickness of the line.

But inking besides now came the harder proces, the coloring. Always a hard think to work with. what color to use what not. Dark, light, gray? Should I go for realism or cartoony. Yeah, I do tend to be stuck with a lot of options, but not to worry. It gets fixed in the end. And so I am able to present you with a colored version of the demon, yay for me.

Welcom to Weekly Procrastinations

As said in the title, welcome.

I'm going to use this blog as a motivation to draw something every week at minimum.

So either you're going to see a blog with a weekly new drawing, or you'll see a blog filled with excuses on why I didn't make a drawing that week.

Sadly I don't dare to call myself an artist.

Sure I have a canvas in my room that I'm painting on right now and my computer is filled with drawings. Not to mention the bunch of folders and sketchbooks that are situated in my closet.

But I never finished my years in art-college and these days I hardly get motivated enough to draw. Sometimes the feeling to just give up drawing is too strong. At those moments I sometimes follow it for days or even weeks.

Yet this yearning to put my fantasy on paper is too strong for me to withstand. I always end up drawing something.

Now to start with this blog I'll post my very very very first digital drawing up here. Just to give you people something to laugh with. And Oh my god, that was made in 2001.

lol low resolution drawing "264 x 250"