Pencil Lines

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.

Last night I watched “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and giggled up a storm. The hotness that is Cary Elwes also prompted me, for some strange, terrifying reason, to attempt to draw my own dashing Robin Hood.

Later on in the night I started looking up corsets on Wikipedia, which lead to hours of fascinated clicking through a couple centuries of historical fashion. SO RAD.

Anyway, here are the sketches I came up with last night.w00t! Look at that dashing character… with his goatee and his tights. Mraow.

I had SOMUCHFUN with the little fashion sketches. Bwahahaha!! Women used to dress so silly… yet for some reason it’s still so compelling.

I love my little black permanent marker pens. Whee!

That’s all for me right now… off to do some homework. *sigh*

Today I have been doing a lot of looking at art. Well, that is, looking at art after having my mum come over and do my laundry for me and cook me lunch and make me tea before scurrying away again. But hey, what else could I do after all that but look at art?

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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*

Agh, sorry it’s been a bit of a while since my last post. I suppose school/work has taken up more time than I thought it would!

I’ve been doing a few fun things here and there throughout the last couple of weeks. Been doing school stuff, which is fun, been doing some silly web-building/designing projects at home wherin I make a complete fool of myself and multiple others for the glory of another (you’ll hear about that shortly!), been helping a friend move, and watching numerous silly Disney shorts (mostly Donald Duck because he’s mah faaavee) on Youtube around also trying to keep up with my blogroll on Google Reader and devART to boot.

But really, it’s mostly school and working on the weekends that’s been taking up all of my time. I get, if I’m lucky, one day a week to myself that doesn’t involve either of the two, and usually I try to spend it socializing, which leaves little room for anything else!

But, I have been getting a couple little art-y things done, so I thought I’d share them. First, the ones that are a part of that website project I was hinting at…

So I was chatting a couple weeks ago with Losmios, aka. Mia and one silly comment lead to another until I was in the midst of coding up an ultra silly fan page for her (Beware!! That link is poison for the eyes!). I ended up working on it for about three or four days straight over my weekend until I was literally being kept awake at night due to crazy coding dreams. I decided to take a bit of a break from it, which I am still in just because I haven’t found the chance to get back to it. I hope everyone that wanted to contribute hasn’t grown bored of it too in my absence…

Anyway, other than doing the website and all the coding and everything I also wanted to contribute some Mia fan art, so I sketched up a couple of things. Here’s the first:

This intellectual piece of work was sketched directly in Photoshop CS and coloured in about an hour and a half. Because I’m all slow and out of practice with Photoshop stuff, hehe! Also, I was having issues with the pressure sensitivity on my tablet, which I still have to go and fix…

Anyway, yes, that was one of my oh-so awesome tributes to Mia. Here’s the second, which is in decidedly worse taste:

Oh joy. The quality is overwhelming me.

This one was done with markers and watercolour. Yes. and I deliberately tried to make it look bad, though I’m sure I could have done a worse job if I tried. I did too good a job of staying in the lines. It’s a hard habit to break!!

Yes. So those were done last week. Since then I haven’t done much by way of drawing, usually just the odd scribble here and there that I don’t like and don’t really want to share. =) But today the awe-inspiring Michael Sporn uploaded some original Bambi storyboards and model sheets and I just about died from happiness. I have previously attempted to draw Bambi on a few occasions in the past, but never have I had such beautiful references. So tonight I sat down and tried my hand at drawing baby Bambi.

These sketches are a mixture of direct reference to get the form figured out, and attempting my own poses. I’m sure you can tell which are which.

I could use more practice, and even now I’m feeling an urge to get back to it. I just wish I had more creativity in terms of poses to draw from! I’m seeing even now that the urge to make his legs shorter/more proportional in real world terms is great, I really have to fight that and stick to the proportions on the model sheet. Also, I tend to make him too stiff; I need to loosen up, though that’s been the trend in my artwork for a while. Always too stiff! Hehe!

Sketching Bambi is a delight, though. Not only is he outrageously cute, but he also has those beautiful, long, thin legs that I absolutely adore. The rhythm, angles and negative spaces made by thin and spindly legs has always been like crack to me, which I love to explore. Hmm, maybe I should get back to sketching. One page is hardly enough!

They were drawn with blue pencil, by the way, but I tinted them in Photoshop in order to make them more visible. I’ll have to experiment with drawing him in other media. Maybe a darker, softer lead might be fun to try… or even brush pen when I get a little more confidant!

Anyway, go explore Michael Sporn’s splog; he has tags for his stuff, here’s the one for his model sheets. They make me squee with joy! Oh, if only I could draw like the Disney animators of old…

Right, I’m off to sketch. =) Turrah!