Pencil Lines

Got a few sketches here.

The first were some sketches I drew while waiting for a recent The Gruff concert to start (check them out; they rock. Seriously). The starting time for the concert advertised on all their posters turned out to be a little optimistic; they started about an hour and a half later than they said. I finished reading a book and sketched these in that time.

This was a day or two after I drew those Donald Duck sketches in my last post, so the ones on this page are a couple I sketched up from memory. I should have done more people drawing; the one of the girl in the hat and striped shirt was interesting. A guy sitting in a table behind me tapped me on the shoulder between songs, saying he had watched me draw it and thought it was awesome. At the end of the show the girl got up and left, but a couple minutes later came back and said “Hey, I heard you drew a picture of me!” Word gets around… haha! I showed her the picture and she really liked it. She told me her name was Melissa. So there you go. =)

Next we’ve got… urm… a couple portrait-y pictures of me. I stumbled across Thundercake’s Time Warp Art Meme and thought it would be fun to try! I’m still not pleased with my drawings/portraits of me, though, even if these were the results after a couple failed attempts… anyway, here’s the one of me from highschool:

Like everybody on devART it seems, I wore baggy clothes and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Well, half the people on DA looked like this when they were teens; the other half were goth. Hahaha, I kid. No, seriously, take a look for yourselves, it’s rather scary.

Anyway, this is a pretty accurate representation of me from the middle of highschool; my ugly fleece “Reckless” hat, my old, threadbare thrice hand-me-down’ed Adidas jacket, a baggy sweatshirt, hand-me-down’ed jeans with holes in the knees, an old backpack filled with freaking EVERYTHING and weighed seriously about twenty-odd pounds or more, my poor old clarinet, my cheap Saan-store bought boots that were the most comfortable things on the planet… yeah. I look rather… high or something in this sketch, but I just wanted to illustrate how sleep deprived I was, spending all hours of the early morning online rather than getting the much needed sleep a 15-year old needs.

Anyway, this isn’t the first time I’ve revisited my old self, but it could be called either a) the most honest, or b) the most pessimistic/critical. Not too fond of the drawing or the style, but I really found it difficult to loosen up and do anything more cartoony. I want to tackle it again soon.

Right, now for present day (aka. 21 years):

Skinny as all hell (like I was in highschool, but it’s more noticeable now due to not-so-baggy clothes), my Union Jack hat, black zip-up sweater (I seriously wear this thing EVERYWHERE), my brown cargo pants (sadly now nearing the end of their lifespan, though I wish to replace them), sandals, geeky t-shirts, my little hand bag that was made in Thailand (fair trade, ftw)… yeah. I’m more boring now, I think, haha. You can tell my hair hasn’t changed a bit. Still trying to pluck up the courage to do something more interesting with it.

Like I said, I’m not all that pleased with these two drawings; I’d like them to be more stylized, more positive and silly. I need to work on that. For now, though, my best model is myself, so I’ll probably be doing more of these sketches until I come up with something I like well enough to post.

Now for some watercolour ACTION!

Warning: The following image will completely kill the souls to anyone who has any affinity or love for watercolour whatsoever. It is not good, it’s not even interesting in that “Huh, that’s, um… interesting” kind of way. It’s terrible. But it’s “art”, so I am obliged to post it…

Using my cheap watercolours, cheap watercolour paper, and cheap brushes I came up with this!! Ta-daaa! Yay, giraffes! I just figured, you know, I have all these watercolour things sitting around, but I never use them, even though I keep telling myself to. So how do I fix that? I use them, of course! Even if it’s with terrible things like this!

Still… he’s kind of grown on me. He kills the eyes, but…. maybe he’s cute?

Did a wet “wash” for the background, completely soaked the not-stretched paper, hence the buckling. Used salt and paper towels to add texture; not sure why I needed to add texture to the freaking sky, but there you go. Did a “shadow” layer in blue on the giraffe; should have chosen a different colour, like purple, so he didn’t melt into the background so much. Went over the shadows with a yellow-y wash which made him look rather green, then went over him again with a wet-on-dry technique for the brown spots and details. I have no idea what the heck I’m doing, but it was fun.

Right, I have school tomorrow (yippee!) so I must head to bed. Thanks for looking!

My good friend d7 of The Seven-Sided Die ran a game of HackMaster Basic last night with me and Dennis presiding. None of us had read the rules all the way through, so it was a lot of fun sitting down and fumbling our way through it. We created two hapless characters, Turdrick Wankersmith the fighter, and Alan Wrench the cleric (mine and Dennis’ respectively), who had elaborate families (Turdrick had eight brothers and sisters, three of which had died, two of murder and one of suicide), and interesting quirks and flaws (Alan was, apparently, a greedy mo-fo, and Turdrick was both racist and had a mold allergy; not too great for dungeon delving!). The amount of randomness and depth created by the random character background stuff was so much fun, I could probably spend whole sessions just sitting down and creating characters, just to see what would come up!

Anyway, when we started playing, I hyped up Turdrick’s racism to an absolutely ridiculous level. Not only did he refuse to drink ale (it made you stink like a dwarf), and figured that all elves were homosexuals and had “relationships” with trees (“It’s unnatural!”), but he also exclaimed loudly, and was absolutely adamant, that all halflings were crackheads; that their tendency to be employed in the theif and rogue classes were so they could make quick cash to feed their drug habits, and that their short stature was due to stunted growth on account of malnutrition associated with their addictions. Oh yes, Turdrick Wankersmith was living up to his name.

So while we were playing and trying to figure out the mechanics of the game I sat down and sketched out our characters. Here’s what I came up with.

Here Turdrick is undoubtably whispering something else bigoted and outrageously inappropriate to Alan, possibly about the parental heritage of the barkeeper or something. It was a lot of fun to draw, I enjoyed making them look silly, and drawing the expressions on their faces. =)

Drawn with 0.7 blue lead (clicker pencil-wise) and both a .5 and a .01 micron pen to ink.

I can’t wait to play more HackMaster, it seemed to be just the right mix of silly and beating things up to make it almost the perfect “just for fun” game for me. I’d like to draw more funny and ridiculous characters like this, they’re so relaxing, because you don’t have to be perfect by all means. =) Roleplaying has always been such a big inspiration for my art; I first got into art on the internet looking up fantasy/roleplaying stuff with my sister when she used to play a lot of D&D. Maybe I’ll turn to this kind of thing more often when I’m finding it difficult to find inspiration.

Right, enough of the roleplaying gush. Now I’m going to go… do some laundry. Yes. Then… um… watch Star Trek? Oh, no, I’m not a nerd, honestly! I just pretend to be one very well.

Hello, all! I come bearing more sketches! Yes, I know it’s been a while, and there’s really not much to this post… just haven’t been doing very much drawing lately. But I’ll share what I do have, at least that’s something!

Right, first we have a random sketch page (there are a couple of these in this post!):

I’ve been trying to work on my cartoony stuff, especially cartoony representations of myself and my friends. I’ve been reading a lot of webcomics and watching a lot of really awesome cartoony artists and the want to be able to do that kind of cartoony stuff for myself is overwhelming! So here I tried a couple versions of “me” (both none too great), one of another friend of mine, d7,  and then a couple random sketches (bleeechh). Oh, and the stereotypical French Guy (or Zombie Mime, as Dennis likes to call him). I like him a lot.

While waiting for a class to start I pulled out my sketchbook and my brush pen and sketched out a phoenix-looking bird-thing. I think it’s kinda pretty. Wings are all screwed up though, haha; I think I have the feathers on backwards.

Then I went to the Mission Folk Music Festival. We go every year, and every time I bring my sketchbook with me hoping to find interesting people and things to sketch. Past years have been nice and prolific on that front, but this year was a little… dry. Anyway, here’s what I came up with.

#1: Ancient Maple Tree:

Right next to the audience area by the main stage in Heritage Park is a beautiful old Maple Tree. While sitting around during performances, I decided to do some sketching of it. Didn’t do it any kind of justice, but I don’t mind the sketch, either. =) Done with my brush pen; quick, and expressive.

#2: Terrifying Baby Sketches:

I did some sketches of my friends’ son. Trust me, he isn’t this scary in real life. Actually, he’s really goddamn adorable. But anyway… yeah. Kids are hard to draw.

#3: Ziggy!!

On the second day of the festival a huge thunder storm came through and shut the whole thing down. Rather than weather it out in our tent, we went and stayed at the parent’s place of one of my friends. They had an absolutely adorable old wire-haired jack russell terrier named Ziggy. I did a couple sketches of her, but I left my favourite there to give to the parents when they got back, and didn’t take a picture of it. Here’s the second one I did. She was so much fun to sketch; so scruffy. =)

#6: *sigh* More Hitler…

Trust me. Despite how it may seem, I do not have a secret fondness for Hitler. I loathe him just as much as the next well-adjusted (that is: sane) and well-educated person. Yet I seem to be drawing him a lot lately. Why? Because my friends keep suggesting to me humourous situations in which to make fun of him when I ask for drawing prompts. Here’s another one. When I asked for prompts, someone suggested “a horse!” and someone else suggested “a fish!” And then they put those together and said: “A horse and a fish having tea!” And then a third friend came up and said “…with Hitler!” *sigh* So, here you go. I wasn’t going to share this because it sucks ass and it’s not going anywhere, but ah well…

I can’t draw fish. =(

So that was the extent of what I drew the three days I was at the Folk Fest. Here’s what I drew afterwards:

I was thinking more about that want to draw cartoony stuff, and was also thinking a lot about my sweetie, so I sat down and doodled this out. It actually made me feel a little nervous, because I’ve never really drawn anything lovey-dovey before, and wasn’t sure if I was being inappropriate. So I waited until I could show it to Dennis before I scanned it. I forgot I left it open on my bed though, so when Dennis came over he saw it and immediately exclaimed “Oh my god, I love it!” So… yay!

There’s a lot wrong with it; I drew it late at night when I was exhausted but too hot to sleep (freaking heat wave!), so there are lines that go everywhere, stupid mistakes, really sloppy inking… but ah well. It’s cute. And that’s all that matters.

Right, one more thing I wanted to show off. My doodle pages at the back of my Latin American Studies notebook:

All right! So… we’ve got some Wilmer the Anteater, robots, bratty kids, mermaids, copious amounts of ugly people… these have been slowly filling my book for the past three months or so, hehe.

When I showed these to Dennis he turned to me and said: “You know, you’re really good at drawing ugly people.” Looking these over I think he’s right, haha. Ugly people are just so much fun; you can play around with weird shapes and facial features, cover them up with wrinkles, jowls, big noses, knobbly bones, bald heads, big ears… it’s so much fun, and so much more expressive than trying to make everything conform to some crazy standard of beauty where the fewer the lines the more “beautiful” it is. That’s boring to me.

So… yeah. That’s all I’ve got right now. I have plans to go have a shower and then retreat to a cafe round-abouts to surf the webs and sketch, so that should be fun. A better way of spending the day than sitting at home surfing the webs and being boring… hehe. Have a good long weekend, my fellow British Columbians!

Right. I have really been neglecting this place, and for that I apologize. I actually have been sketching a lot more the last few weeks than I have the last few months, so I have a lot to share! I haven’t shared it yet because my scanner was buried under a bunch of stuff and I was too lazy to excavate it. Forgive me!

All right, let’s get started. #1 on our list: Crazy Star Trek fanart and other randomness!

All right! Shake it, Riker! *cough* I think some explanations are in order… my friends and I have been watching a lot of Star Trek: TNG lately. And I mean a lot. And obviously one of my friends found the links to the Jandrew Edits… and now I have a couple more life-long scars. Anyway! That’s where the disapproving Klingon comes from. And the scary “dancing” Riker. Yup. I swear. The rest? I have no clue. Hey, let’s have a close-up of the Klingon dude!

There, that’s better. This guy was drawn from memory; Here’s a picture of the actual disapproving Klingon.*shiver*

Okay, moving on! #2, more Star Trek crap:

That there is a portrait of Captain Heather of the U.S.S. Enterprise. She’s probably staring critically at young Ensign Crusher right now and thinking: “I’m gonna kill that kid. I’m gonna kill him.” Ah, adolescent fan-fiction… We also have a pygmy jerboa, and a beet being chased by a potato peeler, suggested by Dennis. I love Dennis.

#3! A couple girls.

I’ve been inspired by some awesome cartoony artists such as Kt Shy and feeling woefully incompetent at the whole fashionable cartoony women thing.  Not getting too far, but hey, practice.

# 4! Cartoony Portraits!

Dennis is such a unique looking person. So here I am attempting to make him look less unique through cartoons. A few different attempts, still not there; man, I wish I had awesome rad cartoon skillz. Like Aido. *sigh* There are also attempts at cartooning myself, but again, need practice.

Right! Next, #5 and #6, are Matrix-y!

Right! So, a looooong time ago I drew myself as a Matrix character. After showing this to Dennis recently we began talking about what he might look like if he existed in the Matrix; and then I visited friends and it’s spread to them too. Here we have Dennis and d7; both of which are unfinished. I’m more satisfied with Dennis’ than d7’s; I’ll probably redo his at some point. Either way, you other guys need to send me ideas for your Matrix versions; I’m looking at you, Darthmaus and Dabrota! Oh, and can you brainstorm Ben’s too? I’ll have to ask some other friends as well…

Right. Now, here’s where it gets good! #7: Six-headed Giraffe Hydra!!

This is another Dennis-ism. While hanging out with friends (and after drawing the Matrix!d7) I asked for some silly suggestions for a drawing and Dennis suggested a “six-headed hydra giraffe.” Here we go. I love silly suggestions.

Talking about silly; are you ready for this? Here we go! The pièce de résistance! #8: Hitler. On rollerskates. Being chased by a rhinoceros.

I freaking love you, Dennis. You guys have no idea how much fun I had drawing this. I think the proudest moment of my life was finishing this sketch.

Right. That was so liberating. Now I’m going to bugger off and go play some Sims 3; or watch some Star Trek: TNG. Or draw som’more. Hot damn, I love my life.

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I’ve been in a bit of a slump creativity-wise for the past couple of years. I’ve had many urges and wants to draw, write and otherwise create, but my brain would be empty of ideas to actually put down, and anything I did come up with would be ruined by my impatience and frustration.

So when I pulled out one of my pens the other week and started randomly sketching on a whim, I was very excited when I actually managed to draw something. Something other than a mess of confused and irritated scribbles! Yay!

So here is the result of that sketch fest that lasted about a half-hour:

No references, and certainly no ideas. Just random sketching. Had some issues with the character in the lower left corner, as you can see; I have a tendency to deface the sketches I immediately hate. The horse at the bottom of the page and the figure with it’s back towards the viewer on the right were contour line drawings; drawn with a single line, without lifting my pen. I thought it would be fun!

Here’s my favourite part:

Creature. =)

A day later I did a second page:

I used a reference picture from DeviantART for that eye there, but I have since lost the link to it and my searches are turning up nothing. How unprofessional of me.

The mermaid was a remix from an old design of mermaid I used to draw constantly when I was fourteen. I must say, they’ve gotten a lot creepier since then!

My favourite part:

I really do enjoy drawing with ink. There’s something so beautiful about a single line, and being forced to use what you put down without the ability to erase. The drawings seem so much purer somehow, and it’s always fun to add more and more detail. They come out looking so delicate, and it really helps to teach you how to steady your hands.

Next we have a drawing of a horse I sketched with blue col-erase pencil a couple months ago. I inlcude this because I am known for drawing horses, and I thought I’d show people the fruits of my labour in all things equine from the past year or so:

‘Eh. Could be better. I’ve fallen behind a lot in my quest to be better at drawing equines, though I hope to try and pick it back up again! I have done better than this, and I want to get back to that.

Next is what I came up with yesterday, after watching “Enchanted” and “Mary Poppins” and being inspired by memories from my youth spent incessantly rewinding VHS tapes in front of the TV. Didn’t draw anything reminiscent of my youth, or anything really pertaining to the movies (except for a bad cartoony bust of Mary Poppins), but I’m glad I had the drive and the patience to draw anything at all!

I apologise for the vulgar language- er, actually, no I don’t. I’m actually quite proud of that there derierre, I’ve been trying for the longest time to catch those curves and I think I might have acheived it this time.

I love caricatures and stereotypes, and love drawing them. The lady in the center is one of my attempts at depicting a stereotype, and I’m quite proud of her. I imagine her name is Mabel, and she works in the office of an elementary school. Perhaps she brings in home-made cookies every Friday for the staff and her favourite students to munch on. I imagine she’d be the kind to play favourites, while doggedly asserting her fair nature. Hey, everyone has to have faults!

That’s it for my first sketch-dump. I promise, future entries will be smaller; at least, I hope they will be. I just wanted to share all these things at once, and see what happens.

Thanks for reading. =) We’ll see what I come up with next!