Week 4: Linear Perspective. Cartoon/Comics. Out of Class Drawing.

2009.11.30

Time: 12 hours  Paper: Strathmore illustration board, 40 x 30″  Media:  Rostow and Jung Akua Kolor slow drying black ink and white acrylic  Actuals: my studio:

Process: Unreal amount of time going up and down ladders balancing a big piece of board and Rotring Art Pen loaded with gray ink for initial layout.   After researching noir comics, I decided to melodramatize perspective, adding a stair, changing floor tile size, increasing proportional ratios which led to a rather a messy layout as I use only permanent drawing media, no pencils, for reasons too lengthy and vitriolic on my part  to go into here.

At this point, according to How To Draw Noir Comics by Shawn Martinbrough, the image is to be Xeroxed several times for working out where to put the black before inking the actual.  This would probably work on a smaller drawing but reducing my 40 x 30″ to even an 11 x 14″ digital print turned the lines to mush.  So I just dove in with a light gray ink wash until it looked all right.  So much for process.  I’d say about half my initial lines, about half the effort I put into it ended up under several coats of black ink or several coats of  white acrylic:  seven wolves were reduced to two, I had a really cool floor tile reflection going on in the window that had to go,  the bird in flight looked like it was hanging from a light fixture, not flying around it, so one of my light fixtures also bit the dust.  On and on.   Most disconcerting was that even at 40 x 30, even in a glorified negative space drawing, one false step with the brush and motorcycle helmets became a pile of rags, ravens turned into sparrows (oh well, ravens are so overused anyway) or wolves in the snow became floundering Dachshunds.  I never did get past gray scaling to black and white in the purist sense either:  see detail below.  Nevertheless it was a rather special week seeing everything as a Noir Comic and realizing the enormous potential of this assignment in effective linear perspective.

Week 3: Value Study. Geek, Biomech and the Post Apocalyptic. Out of Class Drawing.

2009.11.23

What is this?  What I am seeing?  What does it mean? Ooooh.  For more information, see the Week 3 Sketchbook entry on this blog.

Time: 6 hours.  Paper:  Sennelier pastel card.  19 x 26″.  Media:  Black, white and gray pastel.  Actuals: a standard laptop run amok on MS Vista and a bonsai root trained on a circuit board:

Process: I love drawing on pastel card, basically like drawing on sand paper. It allows for many clean layers of pastel.  If only it came in 54″  x 10 yard rolls.  First layer:

Second layer.  Drawing from bonsai, overemphasizing the circuit board and linear perspective because I liked it that way:

Third layer.  Printed out bits of my Perl program (CTRL + PRTSC) graphically enhanced,  (Print Mask for GIMPs).  Pastel on back of print, then traced with ball point.

Week 2: Proportion/Line Punk Genre Out of Class Drawing, Part 1

2009.11.07

Final drawing meeting requirements for Week 2 Out of Class Drawing:  Proportional Line with characteristics of Punk Genre(s).

PUNK20

Time: 1 to 2 hours a day for 4 or 5 days.  Something like that.  Paper: Rives BFK  34 x 26″  Media: black and white ink; black, gray and white pastel.

Admittedly a bit of overkill for a line drawing.  Still, it is a build up of lines.  Detail:

PUNK18

 

Actuals: Watch parts and a piece of broken glass.   I found the broken glass in a dumpster.   I had made the watch parts I had available into earrings prior to this project so ended up having to draw from the earrings:

PUNK12

Process: Loaded Rotring  fountain pen with ink + water for gray ink:

PUNK11

Worked on inking in  proportional line drawing of watch parts in gray then spraying with water for runs and splatters.  Admittedly, at this point, I was doing very unpunk things like swiping up runs with a kleenex when they threatened to mess up really good parts of the drawing.

PUNK16

Inked in watch parts with black ink and used spray bottle to splatter gray ink over paper stencils resembling broken glass.

PUNK15

Finished with black, gray and white pastels.  Used wet brush on pastels to define glass.

Categories : Drawings

Week 1: Gestural Tribal/Graffiti Out of Class Drawing

2009.10.31

Final drawing meeting requirements for Week 1 Out of Class Drawing:  Gestural with characteristics of  Tribal and/or Graffiti

Gestural Tribal/Graffiti

Time: 4.5 hours  Actuals: sprocket, piston, gears, butterfly wings  Paper: Canson Edition Light Gray 22 x 30  Media: black and white ink, gray felt tip marker, black, gray and white pastel  Process: Squeezed sponge loaded with ink+water onto paper for splatter effect.   Brush and ink wash to find center, define general shape.  Traced sprocket and gears with gray felt tip marker.  Gestural marking with black, gray and white pastels.  Used wet brush on pastels to refine gestural marks.

 

 

 

Categories : Drawings