Pencil Lines

I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated, and that I probably should give some excuse, but you all know it already. School, busy, lazy, blah-blah… but I have done some drawing the last little while, so here are some sketches. Enjoy!

The first is a gift for a good friend of mine, TheTazza, of her character Tex. Tazza is a friend of mine in my Fine Arts program, and she is an awesome person as well as a talented artist. This is her belated Christmas present.

It was drawn with nib/dip pens that my sweetie got me for Christmas. I’ve never used nib pens for inking before, so this was a real treat! I have used fountain pens before, but that was mostly playing around with caligraphy. This “dipping” thing was very new to me!

Here was a page of practice scribbles I did with it, trying out some of the dozen or so nibs that Dennis got me, before I started on the picture of Tex:

Tex himself was done with only one nib, and I only very rarely went back over a line with it. It’s amazing the amount of variation in line you can get with a nib pen, especially for someone like me who’s used to technical pens.

Right, onwards!

This is just a little unicorn I sketched back in October at the height of school insanity, just to make sure I still remembered how to sketch. I just liked some of the lines on it.

A weird Alien Dignitary or summat that I sketched a couple of months ago. I thought it looked rather neat. Originally done with blue mechanical pencil, but I tinted it in Photoshop.

This sketch was done over Christmas break at my mum’s place. I was trying to do something productive rather than just sitting around watching TV. I used a photo I found on the Flickr Commons for reference for the dress (it was over 100 years old and in the public domain; I can’t seem to find it again, hehe!). I loved the corset belt thing she was wearing; it looked so cool. I had fun inking her hair. I still need to work on noses, though.

This is a picture of Celes from FFVI that Dennis told me to draw when I was asking for ideas. I had a lot of fun with it, drawing in all the details and trying to get the pose/anatomy right. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better than I’ve done freehand for a while. F pencil, tinted again in Photoshop.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed. I hope to get another post up soon showcasing some of the work I did at school last semester; we’ll see how long it takes me to get around to that. Happy New Year!

Another art dump! I’ll try to keep the words short…

Polly the clone, working on an information console. Hacking is what she does best. =)

A page showing some sketches of d7’s character, Mercy Junius. And a small sketch of Polly too. =)

Tali’Zorah nar Rayyah (damn, forgot the “h” in the picture) from Mass Effect. I’m currently addicted to that game. Drawn using references from Creative Uncut (specifically this one). I haven’t done a detailed ink picture in ages, so this was tonnes of fun to do.

I hadn’t drawn a dragon in a while. I love dragons. I also love muscles. Some day I’ll learn how to draw both properly. Inked with a brush pen.

Was going to be a picture of a Brinchie character from our Shaintar game, ended up turning into a referenceless body study. I really need to do more figure drawing, oi.

A page of Bambi deer (drawn from references on the official model sheets, with the bottom one being from my own head so-to-speak) and a southern belle. We were watching “Little Women” on Christmas, and the dresses were itching at me to be drawn.

And Dennis suggested “A person lying in snow” as a drawing prompt, and it turned into this. I’m planning on playing around with it in Photoshop to see what I can make of it. Rushed and crappy inking job ftw!

Right, that’s all I’ve got so far. Hope you all had a lovely holiday, and I wish you all the best for the coming New Year! Thanks for reading. =)

Hello! I have a few more sketches to post. I’m also wondering what’s better; uploading one or two sketches every week or so, or a larger sketch dump about once a month or so? I seem to have more energy to do them all at once, but uploading the little sketches as I finish them would also help to make this blog a little more active…

Anyway, if you have any opinions, feel free to drop them on me. =)

Today I have a lot of silly little sketches for you.

I drew these two about a month ago when visiting at a friend’s place. I didn’t have any of my usual drawing stuff with me, so I just sketched in a small notebook I had on me with a blue ballpoint pen. You’ll actually see a lot of ballpoint pen in this post; I seem to have reached a bit of a renaissance with it. =)

Anyway, I decided to sketch a really scary looking stereotypical 80’s/90’s girl, complete with the sideways pigtail, crazy bead necklaces/earrings/bracelets, too-big lavender (always lavender!) kitten with yarn t-shirt (preferably with sparkles on it), and baggy sweatsocks. Oh, and some weird missing teeth. I thought she was great. As you can see, I also drew her invisible friend Ashley next to her; every little girl had an invisible friend in the 80’s/90’s! (And don’t you dare call them “imaginary” friends!!!)

The boy was an afterthought after I finished drawing the girl, but I still think he turned out cute. =) I’m not so hip with little boy 80’s/90’s fashion, having no brothers or male friends when I was a little kid…

Right, next!

Dennis said I should draw a “man with a turban”. So I did! And I had tonnes of fun drawing him! I started with the big pointy nose and everything went from there. Blue pencil with micron pen over top. I still think I should have drawn him smiling and showing some big crooked teeth… man, stereotypes are so much fun!

Another one!

Sorry for the dirty looking scan. It’s so hard to scan that blue pencil stuff and have it still be legible. Anyway, this is a WWI doughboy, that is, soldier. Also suggested by Dennis. I used references for this one, though not really any directly. I really am interested in this era in history, so I wanted to show his enthusiasm for being a soldier; the whole “Look ma, I’m goin’ t’war!!” mindset which turned out to be a horrid mistake. Oh, WWI… you taught us so much, and yet we didn’t seem to learn.

Aaaaaaand, for our next number…

I’m actually really not that fond of this one… I still wanted to include it though, for continuity’s sake, and to contrast it with the next picture. Anyway, another image of Polly, my soon-to-be Diaspora roleplaying character if all goes well. I just wanted to point out that this is often the fate of a lot of drawings I try to do, especially of humans of this variety. I sit down with a pencil and try to draw without anything really clear in mind, without a huge drive for much, and it turns out boring, tame, and really… ugh, boring. And bad. It doesn’t even look like her, even though I did have the ability to erase and could make her look like anything I wanted. I was just lazy.

And here’s what happens when I have an idea that’s driving my drawing, and I’m using a ballpoint pen that means I can’t erase and go over things, honing and re-honing until it’s boring as hell:

Yes the anatomy is weirder, but on the whole the pose is much more interesting, it’s filled with energy, and it’s just so much more interesting. I draw with ballpoint pen a lot when I don’t have my drawing stuff around me (hence the kid pictures at the beginning of this post) but I’ve never deliberately used it in one of my sketchbooks when I had my actual supplies. This time I tried it, for just this reason; to force myself to clearly visualize what I’m drawing and get it down quickly, without restraint. I think I’m on a ballpoint pen kick now.

KLINGON!

K, now that the obligatory Star Trek fan art is done…

More Polly! And Dennis’ Diaspora character Miles Tessevel, a galactic merchant. Dennis sat down with me and described his character and I sketched it out for him, asking him at odd intervals “Okay, so what do you want his nose to be like? Large, straight, hooked…?”, “What shape is his jaw? Round? Square?”, “Does he have noticeable cheekbones?” and others like that. It was a lot of fun, and Dennis was rather satisfied with the result. I hope to do at least one sketch like this for everyone’s character in the game. =)

Right! I think that’s all I have to show you for now. Not much, since the last few weeks I’ve been inundated by school assignments and final exams. But now that’s done! I’m free! So here’s hoping I’ll use some of that free time to draw, and not simply watch Star Trek and be boring as hell.

Yesterday Dennis came over again, and once more told me that I should go ahead and do another quick photoshop sketch, kind of like the one I did of the monk boy in my last post. He said I should draw my character concept for an upcoming game of Diaspora that we’ll be playing soon, so I did!

Polly comes from a system named Andy’s Left Foot, a very boring system with one homeworld where they are one of the technological centres of the cluster. The upper class rules with an iron fist, but the planet is overrun with people and pollution, so the upper class likes to get away as often as possible. As such, they are known as the cluster’s Tourists. Anyone who can afford it, mostly the cream of the upper class crop, can make clones of themselves to take care of their business while they’re on vacation, sometimes for years at a time. Sometimes the rich make clones of themselves just to do the work they don’t want to do, but which would be too improper to hire someone else do for them. When the Primes come back from vacation, or the clones wear out, they are recycled back into the system.

Anyway, Polly was one of these clones. Her Prime (the person she was cloned from) was a high-level politician of some kind, and as such Polly was taught all the things her prime knew during Escalated Development. However, she managed to slip through the cracks during the behavioural conditioning and cybernetic imprinting process, and found herself with her own free will and ambition, something that was supposed to be suppressed and stamped out. Being probably the fiftieth clone of this important person, she wasn’t really watched much, nor was she important, making it possible for her to coast through her duties until she was able to engineer a plan to escape.

So, she escapes, and spends her life on the run, jumping from ship to ship, system to system. Her lack of hair makes it difficult, since that’s a sure sign you’re a clone, so she wears a lot of bright make-up and ghastly wigs to try and disguise that fact. Thankfully, fashion in the cluster is such that this makes her blend in rather than stand out.

Here she’s in her room, alone, crying over a love she lost tragically just a little earlier. Clones have no hope of developing any kind of relationships with people, let alone falling in love, so the experience really affected her a lot. All she wants is to live her own life, though a rogue clone is one of the most dangerous things to the people of Andy’s Left Foot due to the knowledge they would hold of the important individuals and their doings. The are hunted down like plague dogs.

Polly isn’t her real name. Indeed, as a clone she wouldn’t have a name, probably an identification number of some sort. I figured Polly was fitting, though, since it is a popular name for parrots, something that copies/mimics others. Since that’s a clone’s entire purpose, I thought she’d be the kind of person who would allude to that fact when choosing a name for herself.

Right… so, yeah, sketched up in Photoshop and inked and coloured there. Again on my laptop. I made another animated .gif to show the different layers of sketch, ink, colour, etc.:

Again you’ll see a blank box; click on it to see the animation. =)

It’s been a long time since I cel-shaded anything, so please forgive any sloppiness or blazing errors you might find. It just takes practice, and I am rather happy with what I came up with in this picture, especially on her face. =) Though I probably should have chosen different colours… the colour scheme is exactly the same as that Monk Boy picture; orange, red, and purple. Oi vey. Ah well! It still looks neat.

I have to head to class now. Enjoy!

Right, so, my life turned a little upside down for a moment there. I got pretty sick for about a week, and at the exact same time my room flooded and I was forced to stay with a friend for a while. =) But thankfully I’m finally back in my room again, and I’m slowly trying to get back to normal!

Dennis has been bugging me to put these up, so now that my scanner’s hooked up again I finally can! Here goes.

First is one last page of Bambi sketches I did before the Great Flood which kind of destroyed my inspiration for it a bit… The only sketch I really like on this page is the one of Bambi sitting looking surprised. =) Still way too much of my own style in them, but ah well!

Some random chicas I drew a few days ago. The lady in the bottom left corner was sketched from a photo from LIFE Magazine’s website. =) Sometimes I need to remind myself that I can still draw from reference.

I was eating with Dennis at The Eatery two nights ago (Thanksgiving Monday, actually!), and since I had all my stuff with me (was moving back home) I pulled out my sketchbook and started to draw. I sketched the chick there first. The Eatery has some really awesome pop-culture-ish woodcuts on the wall, and one of them is a bust of Dick Tracy, and without knowing what else to draw I started to draw him. It looked like he was eyeing her up at a party, and things just lead from there…

The dialogue is: “How d’you like them gams, Dick?” He replies: “I like ‘em swell, Charlie.” Etc. I’m so silly.

Forgive the language in the writing there; I was giving an example of my cursive handwriting (first paragraph) versus my printing (last paragraph). The middle paragraph is Dennis’ usual scrawl. =) Dennis is the one that provided the passage. Heehee.

And the Shit-Bot 2000. Again, forgive the language! I think he’s quite cute, actually…

And now for something completely different:

A random map I drew in Geography class because I was bored and I love drawing maps. =) Drawn with a blue bic ballpoint pen. Ignore the pencil lines; I was trying to figure out tectonic forces, but that was way after drawing it, so it makes no sense whatsoever.

And Galactic Space Newfies. Long story. They’re wearing those big rubber rain hats, by the way, and wellies. The dialogue is: “But how can you tell he’s the captian?” Response: “Idiot, he has the biggest hat!”

Right. Now that I’ve proven my artistic genius, I’m going to go watch more Monty Python. *poofs*