December 9, 2010 0

Another year pushed across the abacus…

By in ruttan's place, sketches, watercolour, women

I’m an old boy, now, but I don’t feel like it. Part of feeling young at heart is through drawing all this crazy stuff. I’ve always loved looking at pictures and colourful, funny cartoons, so it’s a pleasure to draw them This coming year, I want to do more, and put them out more widely.

gorillagal

Today I’ve been drawing little xmas packages for my yearly card. Late, I know, and drawing on the computer takes me way longer than simply dashing off something with the brushes, but this is the task I’ve set myself. Almost done! But it gives me nothing to post. Well, actually, the above people haven’t gone up yet…. (I think, maybe…)

Oh yeah … The Comics Reporter noted my B-day, so that at least pushes me to make more comics this year!

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December 8, 2010 0

Painting Things

By in horses, men, sketches, watercolour, women

redneck-1

Into winter now. Can’t go out. So I’m painting things, and doing an awful Christmas card in Adobe Illustrator. Watching “Blow Up” by Antonioni. Wouldn’t mind being an irresponsible fashion photographer in Swinging London.

Always liked drawing cowboys and horses. Suppose that’s my Alberta background coming out.
cboy

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December 7, 2010 0

Characters

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

devil-boy1

Busy with stuff, not blogging much at the moment. Still drawing things, however. Even things as oddball as these two.

crone

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December 3, 2010 0

Cigar Pair, Take 2

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

Okay, play a game of “Find the differences” here, with the image at the bottom of the last post. Really only 2.

cigar-pair2

Spending altogether too much time on this. But it was fun to write that last post. So, here we go, with a little of the practice.

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December 3, 2010 0

Hard to think of cool titles for these posts…

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

brownhair

…when what you’re doing is putting up more sketches. But the post that gets the most visits is one called “Simple Cats,” so maybe I should try to title them in a descriptive way. Sounds boring, but stuff here is pretty low key. Like I’ve said, I’m really doing this a lot for myself, to see how I can improve, and look back at stuff I think is cool and maybe not so cool.

Above, I’m starting to think she would benefit from more highlighting in the hair. Obviously, one good idea is to look at photos of hair, rather than trying to “make it up,” esp. with detailed colour. Maybe I’ll do that, but overworking something is also a sin.

Another thing I’m trying to work on are drawings which hold up with a brief, sketchy treatment, but not so much in detailed colour. That’s pretty annoying when you’ve worked a long time on something, and then see that an eye, for example, is crooked. One has to check pencil drawings more carefully, putting them in the mirror, or scanning them beforehand. My prob is that I like to just blast ahead. Sometimes that works. Other times I’ve got a heavily laboured-on thing that sucks.

I’m also working on darks and lights!

As in the below pic, the scans show me things I might not have noticed, and I can work on something to improve it. I like correcting the originals rather than doing something in photoshop, whenever that’s possible.

I’m not always going to mention to you guys what I think’s lacking. because maybe you don’t notice it!

cigar-pair

Uh oh! Little rays of sunlight got into the scanner! Oh well.

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December 1, 2010 0

Pen ‘n Ink

By in horses, men, sketches, women

I’ve been messing around with vectors and other things, managing not to post. But here’s a drawing drawed with a good old fashioned dip pen (with brush pen outlines):

street2

And a brush pen horse. Trying to catch that equine grace:
bwhorse

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November 28, 2010 2

More Vectorizing

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

vampira

Getting a little more organised with the vectors. The thing I like about Illustrator is that it’s possible to monkey with lines to an infinite degree. Still plenty to learn, however. Today, I hope to unravel the secrets of the “Gradient Mesh.”

Some more traditional stuff below:
dimitri-etc

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November 26, 2010 0

Digital World

By in men, sketches

hat3

Spent this week learning about some tools in Adobe Illustrator. You can’t just go in and start drawing stuff. But I followed some tutorials, and played around a lot. Very frustrating when your drawing vanishes, you can’t apply a certain gradient, or your edges all turn into a cat’s cradle. But I think I finally got the hang of it. So, that’s another tool in the toolbox!

The drawing above was inspired by Dyna Moe‘s work about the Mad Men TV show. Will try some other things. The completely clean line and shapes are things I’m not used to, generally messy and spontaneous as am.

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November 23, 2010 0

Lady and Tiger, etc.

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

ladyntiger

I think that the simple titles are best for the SEO. (Search Engine Optimization). Not that I really care about how many people visit this, except in terms of raw vanity. I’m doing this mainly for myself, so I can look at it later, and think, “did I really draw THAT?”

Sketchbook page, with parts of the book showing, which proves it’s a sketchbook:
notherpage4

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November 21, 2010 0

Weekend Things and Technical Challenges

By in sketches

2-women

Bored, painting a lot of pictures on the weekend. Hope some of them are funny/cute. I flattened (physically, not by photoshop) the one above so it would scan more easily. Big operation involving sprayed water and paper tape. You non-watercolourists can read about it here, but it’s really not that labourious, once you have the equipment. Just waiting a lot for things to dry.

fountain-gangster

Above, I was experimenting with something called masking fluid, which is like rubber cement. Managed to spill this on the drawing above and below, and found out it picks up paint on finished pictures. So that turned into a technical challenge on how to fix things. These feel mostly like practise anyways. But practise for what? mainly for me, I suppose.

This one also got pasted with masking fluid, though I fixed it (a little in photoshop, though):
pink-kitchen

And other things, from the sketchbook.

The pen drawings are from the Montreal Metro:
nora-subway

civilrights

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November 17, 2010 0

The Usual Obsessive Stuff

By in cats, men, sketches, watercolour, women

cat-boy1

The usual guys blankly staring, cats, and below, cute chicks. Just because I go out to events doesn’t mean I’m not a strange recluse. It just means there are a lot of events happening.

But the video stuff is fun. Takes a long time to upload. My next challenge there is finding music I can use legally, or at least with not bothering too many people….

slip-girl

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November 16, 2010 0

Expozine Sketches

By in men, sketches, watercolour, women

expozine

To decompress at Expozine, I drew and painted these people.

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November 15, 2010 1

Expozine 2010

By in montreal

Happy with how the video turned out, because I didn’t work that hard trying to get every little thing, or even amazing things. Leave that to other chroniclers. This is just my view of the show.

I made sketches, which will be posted later, and I might also make an effort at identifying some of the dramatis personae.

Meantime, here are some photos:

(People with non-flash-using devices such as iPads who see a big nothing below, can visit this link to see the pics in all their glory.)

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November 11, 2010 0

Pair of Pairs

By in men, watercolour, women

pair1

This is a pair of a pair of things. The only connection is that they happened to be on the same pages with each other.

Going to do more street scenes. They’re kind of boring, but when I do them I think of the buildings as having some emotion or attitude. This corner apartment above is happy, and a little perky (Funny. Looking at it now, I’d say exactly the opposite). Perky buildings are more fun to paint, and to look at than buildings without personality. But gloomy, morose ones are fun, too. Maybe I’ll try some of those. They’re mostly based on snaps I’ve taken.

UPDATE: Thinking of buildings with personality, this artist, Dong Kingman, from John Kricfalusi’s blog, has plenty of it in his work [link].

The faces come more out of my head. Maybe that’s why they look too similar. Painting from photos, as with Bogey below, bores me, but I think I should still do it. Maybe not slavishly copying the photo is the right approach. But I’m trying to do better portraits.

pair2

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