This looks a little different form my usual thing, because I was doing an exercise from a watercolour book. That means copying another artist’s strokes as closely as possible. I learn stuff from this, but hate doing it. Took some snaps below, so you can see the book, and the reference.

I’m also bored by drawing from photographs. I know that’s stupid, and you could argue that better drawings arise this way. And, I did learn about matching colours in a better way. So why continue fumbling in the dark? I guess it’s just part of my practice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve used that title before. This is just a page of drawings. Some of them, mainly that dancing girl, relate to work things. Yay for roller pens!

Bought these pencils at a new art store I saw, that had opened up on Laurier Street near Papineau. There used to be a framing shop which had a smattering of art supplies. Now, I guess they thought they’d move out and expand the art supplies. This is welcome, because there’s a dearth of independent art supply stores in Montreal. Still, I wish there was a place which sold things which weren’t like all the other places. Probably would pay too much for them.

Anyhow, I thought the pencils were on sale. They weren’t, but I bought them anyways, because I wanted to patronize the store. They were $2.00 each, but very nice pencils. They seem to slide across the paper a little more easily than the cheap variety. I was careful not to smudge too much, and even sprayed fixative over the paper afterwards. But pencil drawings don’t last long sandwiched in the book (we’ll see).

Not going to draw too many all-pencil scenes, but here’s one. Like usual, it’s just a collection of characters that happened to end up on the same page, vaguely unified by a sketchy background. And, as usual, I’m now seeing plenty of things I missed, and could finish up. Work on complex things is hardly every finished. There’s always something left to do.

Just because I found it this morning via the #kidlitart discussion group on twitter, here’s some advice from an art teacher on how to improve one’s work.

While walking through the park, had to force myself to sit down and paint this. Obviously I could have scooched over so the lamp-post wasn’t in front of the fountain. But hey, I was sitting there. The girl in front, playing with her puppy was super-charming.