Haven’t had all that much time, so I’m putting up some odds and ends I’ve drawn.
The aging guy heads were copied, more or less, from the book Drawing People, by Barbara Bradley.
Flying things, and a nerdy kid.
An old-fashioned “War of the Worlds” tripod, and a farmer’s cart. Why? I have no idea.
For some reason, these take about as long as the black and white ones! Going to try and do more. They’ll probably make more sense, get more relaxed as I go along. I’ve got a pile of stories. Just haven’t drawn (or painted) them, yet. This one come out of my head as I was drawing it. Still, it was inspired by the cowboy things the jam people were doing, and which I’ve put into a previous post.
Pencil drawings, coloured and otherwise. The title of the post is the title of one of those great old Andy Loomis art technique books. But one I don’t have.
After missing a couple of nights, I finally made it to the monthly Montreal Comic Jam. Took pictures, but now I’m lazy, and put them into a slide show. You can actually click on photos as they pass by above to read info about who’s in them, etc.
Enthused about watercolour, I brought my set of paints, forked bamboo brushes and grubby bottle of water, and badgered people to do a watercolour jam. I left them alone, and they performed a stellar job:
Starting from the top, that’s me, Richard Gagnon, Francis Paquette, me again, Kurt Beaulieu, and Jeff LeBlanc.
I did a sketch of these guys, who are the English-speaking division of the jam (except for me):
These are, clockwise from left: Jeff LeBlanc, Michael Arsenault, Brad Doucet, Shane Simmons.
The scrawl in the upper corner is the title of a science fiction anthology from Tor Books Michael has a story in. Pretty cool, but I can’t find it on the web, so perhaps it hasn’t been released yet. More on this when I know.
Was pretty down today, but doing this cheered me up. Just left blank bubbles and squares, then filled them in with whatever. Mainly according to songs I was listening to on the shuffle.
This is something what I’m going to look like when I’m ready to cash in my life insurance. I understand that when one turns 80, the amount you can take out goes down, for some reason I can’t fathom. That’s probably a different cat than present, unless Mr. Boggedy has some strange abilities I’m not familiar with.
The Park party is happening Saturday, Sept. 11. The website for it is here – http://parcmedericmartin.wordpress.com/
You don’t want me for your childrens’ face painter.
There’s a community thing happening in a week or two at Parc Mederic Martin, a neglected little park a block or two east of here. It’s based on a sort of Parisian model of the park with the long centre walk, but left to seed. The trees on either side have overgrown; their shade has not allowed the grass to flourish, and the whole thing has the feeling of a dark tunnel. The kind of thing you see in horror films. Also a tiled fountain which must not have been turned on since the 1970s.
Anyhow, I might be there. And I’m hoping one of my talented pals, who are good face painters, show up. Caro Caron has a website with her group les feés des artifices, which is very charming, and good promotion. For you clunky anglos out there, that’s a play on “feu d’artifice” or “fireworks,” with the word “fairies.”
Didn’t want to go on so long to set up this old cartoon of mine about face painting, but there it is at top, courtesy of Richard Gagnon’s little comic mag, What the F***? Nowadays, you’d suspect the asterisks are standing in for a dirty word, but that’s the actual title of the mag.
Just another watercolour thing to keep the blog rolling along. At least I did some useful work today! Gotta feed the cats.
This is the first drawing I’ve done with my Koi water brush. Explanation here, on my Tumblr blog.
The tumblr is more for ramblings of mine that can’t be contained on twitter. This will be my more formal blog, and sketch blog. Trying to separate the two of them. I am large! I can contain multitudes!
I’m way more comfortable drawing in a spidery scratchy way than I am making the slick lines that seem popular in animation and graphic art these days. Still, fun to try. Doing some construction is also helping me with the heads and bodies. Part of the trouble with being self-taught as an artist, is that you miss a lot of things. In this case, it was my drawing with contours, rather than from the inside out, as you’re taught in art classes.
So, even though I’m am old (-ish) guy now, there’s still lots to learn. Which actually is fun. So boring to do the same thing over and over again, or copy someone else’s work. It will give you a good “surface” for commercial work, but it seems that a lot of illustrators are trapped into that. I’m doing the best with what modicum of talent I’ve been blessed with.
Discussing hats, and drawing them, on twitter. Dylan Meconis offered a tutorial on her blog on how to draw tricorn hats. I don’t have big problems with those. But I do with fedoras and cowboy hats. So another artist, Brian Moore, offered me this:
Worst-case scenario: ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX, THE SINGING COWBOY GANGSTER.
So, of course I had to try it.
