I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve not been posting here in a long while, and I almost lost the blog to some sort of server issue, so I got the blog back, and I thought I should post something. Here it is.
October 2, 2018
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Scattered Brush
By Jack Ruttan in color, digital
Digital painting still isn’t coming easy to me, but I’m happy with the look I can get when I applied “scatter” to my usual drawing brush. I don’t even have to delete the underlying lines. Just paint over them. And this has got a pleasing chalk-like effect to me.
So different from my usual watercolour. The main challenge is mastering all the colours. Using a “swatch” palette helps there.
August 31, 2018
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Digital Peeps
By Jack Ruttan in digital
I think the airbrushy style is a good complement to my still wiggly digital painting. Looking for something that’s slightly attractive, though maybe I should stick to watercolour and ink. Doesn’t stop me from trying, but the cat is doing her best to discourage me, by leaping up and bunting the stylus as I try to work.
July 27, 2018
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Digital Bizness
By Jack Ruttan in color, digital
The one on the left is actually a lady. But I think I gave her too much jaw. May fix that, because it is digital, after all.
June 29, 2018
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Knausgaarding
By Jack Ruttan in black and white, Book Reviews, pencil, Portraits, sketches
Finishing up the fifth volume so far of Mr. Karl Ove Knausgaard’s series “My Struggle.” My mind is a little blown, but his story stimulates me not to give up on my own journey.
My pal is waiting for the final volume, coming out in September, but I will have to wait until she’s finished with it. Still, that’s no problem, because she turned me onto it in the first place. And for that, I’m grateful!
June 14, 2018
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The Savage Yard!
By Jack Ruttan in brush pen, comics, digital
A comic by me, Jack Ruttan. Computer colours, this time.
Seems like digital is much slower, and much more reliant on know-how than watercolours are, which are sort of in my bones. Still working on the work flow!
Of course, what a person thinks about this who grew up with digital and has trouble with watercolours, I have no idea.
June 7, 2018
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A Comic. By Me.
By Jack Ruttan in color, comics, digital, watercolor
Life has been tough, lately, and I’ve not been doing some things I should have been doing. I don’t know if comics is one of them, but lots of illustrators are doing them. And if I call myself a writer/slash illustrator, then that’s a natural. But it’s not very renumerative.
I started drawing digitally, got frustrated with that, and then drew the whole thing out on a piece of paper in about an hour. Then I tried colouring it digitally, got frustrated with that, and then printed it out, traced around, and then made a watercolour overlay that went underneath the lines. It’s a little digital, since in the old days people like Richard Corben would draw lines on a sheet of acetate which laid over the colours which were hand done on a piece of art board.
I did something similar, tracing and then colouring in watercolour on paper. The paper shrinks, so it doesn’t always line up, but one can stretch the colour image, if one is canny and digital.
This turned out to be a lot of work, and I don’t know if it is totally successful, or as effective as drawing the whole thing out on paper, with ink overtop, but it was an interesting experiment I may never do again.
Still, I want to do more comics. Better written, and about whichever subjects, and coloured in whatever way.
April 28, 2018
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Digital and Traditional Sketchbook Pages
By Jack Ruttan in color, digital, sketches
I messed with both digital and traditional (as it’s called) sketchbook pages today. The traditional pages, compiled into books, are more organised. The digital ones are everywhere, squirreled into cryptic files, over two computers.
There’s a tiny bit of digital here, anyhow!
April 28, 2018
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Pages from One of My Sketchbooks.
By Jack Ruttan in black and white, cats, color, Coloured Pencils, Gouache, sketches, watercolour
There’s a lot that I draw that I don’t put up. Trying to remedy that a bit. It’s not all brilliance, but here it is.
Pencil, coloured pencil, Gouache. I think that’s covered it, technique-wise.
April 26, 2018
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Another Mopey-Looking Guy….
By Jack Ruttan in digital, men
….drawn while I was watching something else. Seems to be where my mind goes to when you set it into “neutral.” I wonder why?
April 26, 2018
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Karloff-ish.
By Jack Ruttan in digital
Listening to this very good podcast about Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, I drew my idea of Boris Karloff on my computer. I should really use references, so this guy is just Karloff-like. (darn it! Lots of pictures on the podcast site!)
You know, one of my Great-Aunts was married to Karloff for a while, but he had a few wives, as movie stars tend to do, and I’m not sure where she shows up in the list.
I like the background here, which looks very Impressionist, like a Monet.
