Did a picture of Stan, who is Peggy’s hairy friend on the “Mad Men” TV show, when I realised I had space on the paper, and should probably do Peggy too. She was much harder to draw, and I spent most of the morning on that. Oh well.
I like this paper.
In a bit of a mood. So, these people are appropriate. I still love drawing with the ballpoint pen, no matter how unarchival it may be.
I first thought of titling this post “Fairly Insane Paintings,” but am trying to be kinder to myself.
These all measured seven and half-inches wide, and I think I’m going to do a lot more of them, but on better paper. They were fun to paint.
I don’t know what possessed me to put a cute puppy dog in with Dante and Virgil, but sometimes one’s first idea isn’t always the best. But they’ll only get better.
I’m very pleased with this image from a current project for filmmaker Jonathan Balacz, WEDGEWOOD. Even though it just appears as an image on a screen inside an image. The two figures are on separate layers, and I hope will be animated to chase each other through the scene, like Punch and Judy puppets.
Doing studies of faces today. Also watching Youtube videos detailing all the mistakes I’ve been making doing watercolour. It’s nice to know, but I still have fun doing things my way. Learned stuff, though, which is always good. [Link here!]
This digital painting seems nicer with the “saturation” turned down. I’m still not happy with my digital work, as it doesn’t seem to come as easy, or look as natural, as the watercolour. Still, it’s an interesting challenge, and things always improve as you work on them. To make nice lines with the stylus, I have to use my arm, which doesn’t allow me to control things as tightly. Plus there are all those switches and layers to remember. That’s very left-brained. The stylus is not as nice a tool to wield as a brush is.
One might say “why bother,” but I think it’s a valuable skill to master. I want to be able to do it as fast and as quickly as the brush or pencil.
Painting characters the other day, while watching season one of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which is an often excellent cartoon series in terms of storytelling and characterisation. [Excerpt from Avatar: The Last Airbender]
These faces aren’t from that series, but the line about the power plant was.
Here’s another landscape. My family has a lot of landscape painters in it. Don’t know if I’m really keeping up the tradition, but it’s fun to smear paint around sometimes.
I need to take better notes, because it would be nice to know exactly where these places are. One is Ave Laval, I think. The one below is a converted firehall on rue Notre Dame West. Or, I could be way off.
Doing a lot of paintings at the moment. Up there is the control building for the revolving bridge that no longer works. It’s from a 2012 photo, and the graffiti is old, and the bike path doesn’t even go by it at the moment.
These two pictures are painted on terrible paper. Sort of like painting on the paper towels you dry your hands with in washrooms. Still, it affords its own effects.
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Seriously, yesterday I went to the Sartec mixer. That’s the Quebec union or group or whatever for French-speaking screenwriters. Got a couple of wires crossed. The meeting was taking place in the reserved salon, three stories up, and I was waiting downstairs in the bar. Met a nice couple who also couldn’t find the meeting, and had a drink with them. After they left, I nursed my pint, and started drawing characters in the bar. Here are a couple of them:
The guy on the left is the Quebec version of George Clooney. The guy on the right is maybe its Roberto Begnini.
Sometimes I worry about what people would think of their pictures, because I do this for myself, not to please others.
However, once I found out that the meeting had been going on all this time, in the suite up above, I sketched a couple of people there:
That’s it for the moment!
Many watercolour types have to spend a lot on sketchbooks, with the proper paper and all. I found these black spiral-bound books at Dollarama, and they’re pretty good for watercolour. I worry about the paper, since it probably isn’t acid-free. Also, it tends to break free from the perforations along the side rather easily. But for sketching, it’s great.
These are some things I’ve been doing during this time.
Painted pictures of “swamps” today, using various random methods. Got paint in my eye. That stung a bit.
Above is “wax resist,” which means drawing on the blank paper with a white china marker. I really can’t tell where it goes beforehand.
This is China Marker, also my dragging the tail of the brush on the paper, which makes little furrows. As well, there’s “backwash,” which is wet paint dripped over already drying paint, which makes little plant-like blooms.
I tried to make a “sun” in the sky with the china marker and yellow, but it didn’t work, so it becomes a box.
I turned this one upside down while drying, and also splattered paint on it by flicking the brush. Hence the paint in the eye. Finished off with a few blasts of compressed air, which produces those spider legs. Altogether fun!
Usually, my paintings are pretty tiny. So it’s nice to break out once in a while, and paint relatively big. (11×10 inches).
