sketchtastic

Random Doodles....

2009-11-19T21:55:00.000-08:00

I don't have anything I'd call an actual 'sketch' for sketch a day, so I thought I'd share some 'telephone doodles', the stuff I scratch onto a piece of paper when I'm talking on the phone or watching TV, etc.

I love doodling like that because I like to see the totally random suff my brain comes up with.

Ok, there's no way I could ever represent the above as anything other than just crappy random scribblings, but it illustrates something I really love to do, which is to take something fairly normal then take it completely out of it's context and juxtapose it with something totally unrelated.

That's waffle-speak for "I like to draw weird things that don't usually go together".

For example, if you look at the robot's head, and just it's head, you see it's fairly intimidating, it looks a little like a Cylon Centurion...something you might see on a sci-fi 'assassin droid'. Imagine what just the head would make you think of if you saw it alone. Then, when you see it with the weird body with it's too-long, lop-sided arms...punctuated by the fact its holding a couple of balloons...and suddenly you don't know what to make of it.

It it a servant droid at a birthday party? Is it just a droid that happens to love balloons? Who knows?

Why is an egg in sneakers 'flipping the double bird'? Why is a massively afro'd bobble-head flying a kite?

I don't know either...it's basically mind vomit.

Sketch-A-Day 11.17.09

2009-11-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

Superquick sketch done in about a minute and a half just so I wouldn't miss yet another day. Sorry this is so small (and she doesn't have any feet...the original drawing is only a couple of inches high.

Sketched while bored and watching TV

Sketch-A-Day 11.16.09

2009-11-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

Eagle eyes readers will see the title of this post is Sketch-A-Day 11.16.09, when the time and date stamp says it's 11.17.09.

Well, as I type this it's 12.02am, I drew these early this morning and have only just got around to posting them...sue me.

You really need to click the image to get a full size view to properlly see these. I decided to try and break my 'I've forgotten how to draw' streak by drawing some classic Dean Yeagle sketches in my own style. Dean Yeagle's art is amazing and deceptively simple. It's a classic example of doing more with less. While a ton of rendering can hide a multitude of sins, Yeagle's work shows off the cartoonists maxim: When you only have a few lines to render your subject, they'd beter be the right lines.

The only thing I really changed was giving the character slightly more realistic proportions. I'm not a huge fan of the 15 inch waist.

Sketch A Day 11.15.09

2009-11-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

This one didn't come out as well as I wanted. It honestly feels like I'm drawing with my feet recently. Plus, I didn't do this in my sketchbook, but on a regular piece of copier paper that just doesn't hold up very well.

Still, not bad for ten minutes.

Sketch A Day 10.14.09

2009-11-14T19:41:00.000-08:00

Today's sketch is definitely a sketch...about 45 seconds work.

For the past couple of days I've been feeling really burnt out and everything I've tried to draw has come out looking like I drew it with my foot. Nothing was working and I discovered I'd completely forgotten how to draw basic things like shoulders and arms.

After trying for two days to come up with something postable, I decided to take a total break from drawing...and it was only when I was sitting in front of the TV and drawing from sheer boredom I came up with something I actually quite liked.

This was a sketch that I literally made up as I went. When I first put pen to pencil I didn't even know if I was drawing a male or female. I like the hair a lot...I guess I was subconciously inspired by Molly Lewis, as I've been watching a lot of her vids lately.

Anyway, I guess Sketch a Day may not actually be sketch a day for a while. When I'm forcing myself to draw when I have no idea what I want to do is just a great way to waste paper and get frustrated.

Missing Sketches.

2009-11-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I've missed today's sketch a day...

I actually did a sketch, but it got away from me and it ended up as something I don't even want in my sketchbook, never mind online.

It sucks out loud, so I'm not going to share it.

Sketch A Day 10.11.09

2009-11-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

I realised that Senor Kato Katonian suggested Optimus Prime in a Mariachi BAND, not Optimus Prime as a Mariachi. After a few moment's thought, Mike Kruhulik's Fruit Fucker Prime is a perfect fit.

I need to pull out the old guitar and write the song they're singing.

Sketch a Day 11.10.09

2009-11-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

After yesterday's Baby Cylon, I was running out of ideas so I asked the Twitterati for some ideas. Fellow blogger suggested Optimus Prime as a Mariachi.

This one was simultaneously incredibly fun and incredibly difficult. You see it's relatively easy to just draw a guy or girl...but when you're talking about a character like Prime, you can't just fudge it, because while you might end up with a cool looking robot, you won't end up with Optimus Prime. Plus, from the design, I don't think it's actually possible for Prime to have his right arm bent at the angle he does in this sketch.

Anyway, this was a quick 15 minute job from start to finish but it's something I might revisit in future. There are a few perspective errors and the guitar is misshapen and weird looking but considering it's something I threw together in 15 minutes and have never drawn before, I quite like it.

Sketch a Day 11.09.09

2009-11-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, this one was a ridiculously quick (sub 2 minute) sketch that I rattled off because, in all honesty, I was tired and really couldn't be bothered spending a lot of time on anything.

Having said that, I kinda like it.

Sketch-A-Day 11.08.09

2009-11-08T15:45:00.000-08:00

I finally took the time to play all the way through Assassins' Creed, so I decided Altair, Assassins' Creed's protagonist would be a good subject for today's sketch a day.

This one was very, very, very quick...but despite all it's flaws, I kinda like it. (Except for his left boot, that just looks retarded.)

Sketch-A-Day 11.07.09

2009-11-07T02:17:00.001-08:00

Decided to forgo the inking and actually render something in pencil for once. I'm quite pleased with how this one came out.

sketch-a-day 11.06.09

2009-11-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick sketch I did in about twenty minutes on the whole 1940's nose-art/pin-up theme:

Some obvious errors (for example, I somehow managed to give her a TINY head...proportionally, she's be at least eight feet talk)...but I like the way it turned out.

I may have to fix/ink this in future.

Sketch-A-Day 11.05.09

2009-11-05T04:26:00.001-08:00

Sometimes things just don't work out right:

On the upside, I learned a ton from this drawing. First was not to go straight into a drawing with a brand new nib that you haven't broken in yet. There are a TON of mistakes in this drawing caused by the nib.

Secondly, and far more importantly, I REALLY need to learn how to render with ink properly. The girls don't look too bad, but that's because drawing comic-book style women are far more about contour drawing than anything else...but Santa on this one, his clothes look ridiculously under-rendered and the chair is just a joke.

Thirdly, all their faces ended up much worse thanks to the nib problems, but I need to learn to draw better expressions. THis was meant to be santa smiling away and two women who look extremely happy to be there. Instead, Santa just looks a little creepy and Bond-villain like, and the girls look like they're waiting for a picture to be taken so they can just leave.

It's a failure, but a failure that I learned a lot from...which as someone trying to improve, is almost as good.

I realised I never posted he inks of the Christmas Girl I did a few days ago, so after photoshopping out the mistakes I talked about in that post, here it is:

Sketch a Day 11.04.09

2009-11-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

So I'm working on an idea that I got thanks to a number of completely random unrelated things.

First of all I saw an image online with the great Mel Brooks line "It's good to be the king."

Then, after working on the Christmas Girl yesterday, the two things collided in my head and I came up with the idea of a drawing of Santa sitting on a big throne line chair with a sexy christmas girl on each arm..."It's good to be santa".

As always, I start with a very, very basic 'thumbnail' just so I can get the idea straight in my head. Ten minutes later I have this:

This highlights one of the biggest problems I have. I have real difficulty drawing multiple characters and objects and keeping them in scale with each other. I developed the really bad habit of always starting drawing a figure with the head, which means I have difficulty getting the characters placed right. Basically, I can draw a decent picture of someone sitting down, but getting them on an already drawn chair is tricky.

Even though that's something I really need to work on... for this drawing I could cheat a little. Because the final drawing will be on 11x14 bristol board, and I don't have any paper that big to do the prelim sketches on, I'm having to draw the characters on separate pieces of paper anyway...which means if the scale is off, I can simply scan and resize them to the correct scale before transferring them to the Bristol with my light box.

Anyway, here are the prelim Christmas girls. They're still a little rough (especially the faces), but I like to leave myself something to do during the inking stage:

The good thing about working like that is it allows me to change the basic composition on the fly. For example, if you look at the original concept sketch, you can see I had the girls quite high, whereas after looking at it for a while, I'll probably have them much lower down.

More on this drawing as I go through it

Lessons Learned.

2009-11-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

Here's an artist's proverb I just made up:

"When you try something new for the first time, expect it to bite you in the ass."

I couldn't sleep, so I decided to kill some time by transferring the sketch from my last post onto Bristol board and inking it.

I had some fairly large areas of black so I pulled out my brushes, and just for the hell of it, decided to ink the whole thing with brushes instead of my usual crow-quill pens.

It actually turned out well. In fact, it turned out far better than I really should have expected considering my total inexperience with brush inking. I made a few mistakes, but those were quickly and easily covered with regular old white-out.

Then, realizing that a Christmas drawing just doesn't look right in black and white, I remembered I had a bottle of red calligraphy ink knocking around somewhere, and decided to at least put in the reds.

Now, I've never used calligraphy ink to draw with before, and I've never used it with a brush, but I quickly discovered that a couple of coats of red ink gives a rather nice velvet sort of texture. I colored the hat, the skirt...and then made a rather useful discovery.

Red caligraphy ink simply won't stick to white-out.

The drawing was instantly ruined.

Bollocks.

Well, the one upside of messing up a drawing is it does allow you to experiment a little , and just for laughs I remembered I had some gold glitter, so decided to give the character's belt buckle some sparkle.

Well, the result is a ruined drawing, but a good learning experience...and as a novice artist, that's almost as good:

Sketch-A-Day 11.02.09

2009-11-02T02:26:00.001-08:00

This one's not just a stad-alone sketch, but a prelim for a Christmas Pin-up I'm working on. All in all, I'm really happy how this turned out...but I think the eyes came out a little too anime-ish. I'll probably change those when I do the final piece.

Sketch-A-Day 110.01.09 - Sketching Video!

2009-10-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

Finished Sketch:

This time around, I thought I'd share one of my favorite practice techniques as well as a video so you can get an idea of how I draw.

The technique's really simple. All you do is come up with a fun keyword, put it into Google image search, pick the first result that shows a full-body pose, then start the clock and draw it in less than 30 minutes.

I chose a 30 minute time limit because it gives you plenty of time to create a semi-polished drawing, but not enough time to get caught up in lots of details...and also stops you over-rendering to hide your mistakes (and it's amazing how many artists hide badly drawn anatomy by rendering every thread, fold and bit of lint on their subject's clothing to hide it).

As always, I'm not including this video as a tutorial. I'm not presenting this as a 'how to draw' post. I'm not posting this to show everyone how awesome I am a drawing. This is one novice artist sharing a tip that helped me get from totally sucking to not sucking quite as much.

Enjoy!

Sketch-A-Day 10.31.09

2009-10-31T00:41:00.000-07:00

With today's sketch I decided it needed a little color and used the only colored pencils I had which are 'watercolor pencils'.

Then a number of bad things happened.

The actual sketch came out okay, but when I scanned it, it turned out that the watercolor pencils are weirdly reflective, and the scanner made the deep shades far too intense while completely failing to pick up the midtones.

In short, the scanner completely butchered it. It looked so f**king awful that I just couldn't bring myself to post it.

Let me be clear here, I consider myself a novice artist. I'm used to not liking the vast majority of my artwork...but this was something special. It was really, really, really bad.

So I haven't posted it. If I get a chance I'll just take a photograph of the sketchbook page and post that.

Sketch-A-Day 10.30.09

2009-10-30T00:49:00.001-07:00

More nose art. Not happy with it, not particularly unhappy with it either. I'd love to actually try to paint one of these one day.

Sketch-A-Day 10.29.09

2009-10-29T02:20:00.001-07:00

Ok, this one is so spectacularly bad that if I hadn't made myself take an oath to post a sketch every day, regardless of how good or bad it came out, I would tear this from my sketchbook, burn it and never mention it again.

I've never drawn a dwarf before, did this totally off the top of my head, and by the time I'd gotten the head and shoulders drawn I knew I was badly off track. By the end I was rushing it just so I could get this sketch over and done with.

It's hard enough to draw regular anatomy, but bending those 'rules' is even harder. It's easy enough to say that dwarves are short, but short how? Is it just their legs that are short? Are they just a scaled down human? What is the fashionable dwarf wearing this season?

Well, I promised I'd post both my successes and failures...here's one of my failures.

Title of the blog...

2009-10-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

This post should explain why this blog is called 'Scrawlings from a Diseased Mind'

One of my favorite things to do is sit at my desk or in front of the TV, open up my sketchbook and just let the pencil move on its own. Whatever pops into my head ends up on the paper and whatever ends up on the paper invariably leads to something else. Eventually, I tend to look down at the paper and ask a simple question:

"What the hell is wrong with me?"

I usually end up with something that looks like a lunatic drew it. If you've ever struggled to explain a really weird dream you to someone, you can probably quess what some of these scrawlings look like. I thought I'd share a few in this post.

Sometimes they can be quite normal:

With this one I'd just seen some gorgeous artwork over at Dresden Codak and really liked the design of a dress one of the characters was wearing...so I made up a random female and drew the dress from memory.

Other times, these sketches can get a little weird:

.

Believe it or not, I can actually explain what led to this weirdness, how one image led to another...but I won't burden you with how my sick, sick psyche works.

...Oh, why the hell not.

First I drew Ashley from Mass Effect, which got me onto sci-fi suff which resulted in the X-Wing and TIE Fighter. Then I remembered the controversy when Mass Effect came out about the PG-13 sex scene in it, which reminded me of the controversy when Aladdin came out because Princess Jasmine shows her (Shock Horror!) navel. This led to a sktech of Jasmine looking as innocent as possible with a far less 'innocent' looking cartoon lady next to her.

As for why there are so many sound effect or why Ashley is shouting 'Pew Pew!" as she fires her gun...well, that's just me.

Anyway, just an obvious disclaimer, but this is the internet, and there's always some troll or two who likes to stir shit up, so let me just mention ahead of time that these, along with most of the other sketches I post on here are NOT finished works. They're not meant to be great works of art, it's the stuff I scrawl into my sketchbook when I'm bored.

Having said that, I hope you enjoy the artwork...even if only for its lunacy.

Sketch-A-Day 10.28.09 - "Nose Art"

2009-10-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

So I was seriously lacking in inspiration today, so just did some random google image searches.

I stumbled across a collection of 1940's 'Nose Art'... Literally the artwork used to decorate the noses of military planes, most commonly seen on big bombers like the B-17.

I instantly fell in love with the style and the idea behind it. It's classic pin-up artwork, but from a slightly more 'innocent' era. No actual nudity, outfits that would would hardly be called 'skimpy' by today's standards...just classic 40's 'babes' in images where the legs are always the star.

This sketch is almost a direct copy of actual 1940's nose art and it's a great example of why I love this style. A very prim and proper lady, in a dress that wouldn't look out of place in church, but with that slight slapstick element of a sudden gust of wind exposing her legs and stocking tops.

Expect to see more nose-art style sketches this week.

Sketch-A-Day 10.27.09

2009-10-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I admit I was goofing off a little today. If you're even 1/10th the geek I am, you'll recognise the 'Fruit Fucker' from Penny Arcade.

I won't lie, the little guy's insanely fun to draw. Not only is he incredibly easy to draw, there's just something deliciously silly about a character that's half juicer, half homocidal maniac. A crazy kitchen appliance with an uncontrollable lust for oranges.

Sketch-a-day 10.26.09 - Harley Quinn

2009-10-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

Harley Quinn from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

This was a very quick (sub 30 min sketch) and there's a lot I don't like about it. This was drawn from a reference pic, and while there are a few technical errors, My main failure was tha I didn't manage to capture the energy and 'attitude' of the original. Basically, in the original, Harley looks like a real bad-ass chick...in mine...well, it looks more like someone going to a Halloween party in a Harley Quinn costume than Harley Quinn herself.

Anyway, lots of lessons learned on this one. It's amazing how much the tiniest alteration can make to the feel of a drawing. If I'd angled her hips slightly more and cocked her head a touch to one side, I'd have got more of the aggression and energy of the original. Basically, the original had 'dangerous' body language...this one she looks like she's happy to pose for the drawing.

Sketch a Day - 10.25.2009

2009-10-25T00:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, I seriously doubt I'll be able to keep this up, and considering the whole point of 'sketch a day' is to learn to draw the things I don't know how to draw, it's not going to be great.

Now I've got your hopes nice and high, here we go.

I didn't know whether to count this as an actual sketch, because it's basically the 'title page' I did for my new sketchbook. As always, I'm not happy with it...but it's only after scanning and uploading it that I realised just how awkward her right leg looks.

Here's a very quick dragon I sketched while sitting at the computer desk. I've never drawn a dragon before and didn't use any reference, so I was designing as I went. That's why instead of looking like a dragon it looks more like a dragon/serpent/Loch Ness Monster. It was also literally a five minute sketch before I had to leave to go grocery shopping which is why it looks so unfinished. Thinking it might actually look quite cool if I took the time to draw some scales etc.

Any ideas on what I should draw for 'Sketch a Day'? Leave me a suggestion in the comments.

Sketches and Other Stuff -Oct 24, 2009

2009-10-23T21:08:00.001-07:00

First a few finished pieces done over the last few weeks:

This is a fairy, because...I have no idea. I just thought it would be fun to draw a fairy.

With Halloween coming up, I decided to draw a classic Witch pin-up. This was my first attempt at brush inking, and other than when I need to fill large areas with black, I think I'll be sticking to my crow-quill pens in future.

Both finished pieces (and more) are available in my store

Now for a sketchbook page.

I'm not going to spend much time in the future explaining these, but my stepson misheard me say "I love chucking grenades back at guys" when we were playing Call of Duty on the 360 and somehow thought I said "Swampy the Fun Badger". In that moment, Swampy was born. The rest is what happens when I sketch while watching a video or listening to a podcast and just let my pen move on its own.

More sketchbook pages as time goes on.

Facelift Time

2009-10-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, I haven't posted in forever, and to be honest, just looking at my stuff from six months ago makes me want to delete every single post on here.

Anyway, I'll be giving Sketchtastic a facelift in the upcoming week or so. I've caught myself spending way too much time on learning to ink and spending hours and hours on a single piece, instead of actually learning to draw by drawing as much as possible.

So, I'm going to pull out the old sketchbook and from now on I'll be going back to drawing something every day (or more realistically, every few days) and posting the results on here.

Don't expect polished, finished work, and considering what my sketchbook pages tend to end up looking like, prepare yourself for a viewpoint on my diseased mind.

2009-03-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

This one was a great example of Murphy's law.

I'd decided to do just a quick twenty minute sketch, so of course, pulled out a copier paper instead of the Bristol pad. Then, of course, I liked it enough to want to ink it.

So, this is a great example of how cheap copier paper doesn't like India Ink...and how much I really need a lightbox.

Anyway, this one was done with reference of the lovely Ms. Helena Bertinelli AKA Huntress, who follows the usual rule of my favorite comicbook characters in that she wears a shiny black costume that I have absolutely no idea how to render. I kept the pose fairly close to the original so I could almost copy the light kicks on her costume directly.

Again, there's more I don't like about this than I do...but it was a hell of a lot of fun to draw, and any chance to practice using a crow quill is always useful

Can you tell that I'm a Birds of Prey fan yet?

More lessons learned

2009-03-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

This one was an almost entirely new experience for me.

This one I penciled on regular old copy-paper, scanned it into photoshop, lightened the image until you could barely see it, printed it on Bristol, then finally inked it with a Hunt #102 Crow Quill pen with India Ink.

Once I was finished and really looked at it, I realized I was only about 20% happy with it. There are a ton of mistakes that just leap out at me (not least of which being her hand that came out looking like a deformed, gnarled claw), and also a ton of more subtle mistakes (like the line of her left arm that I was totally unhappy with).

That being said, this one taught me a hell of a lot, both directly and indirectly.

Firstly, while inking with a crow quill adds a certain level of fluidity and depth you can't get with a 'regular' pen, it's really easy to lose detail when you're still inexperienced with them (like I am). You become so focussed on getting a smooth line with a nice thin-thick transition, that you miss subtle shape and line changes. Basically, timid line work with your inking can suck an awful lot of the energy and flow you had with your pencils.

Secondly, A little change can make a huge difference.

It really is amazing how altering a line by a 16th of an inch can make a massive impact to your drawing. For example, after I finished this piece I looked at it and something just looked wrong and I couldn't figure it out. After comparing my pencils to the finished inks I saw the hip line was off by less than double the width of my pen nib, and adding that extra couple milimeters of ink made me go from hating this drawing to quite liking it.

I really don't like the legs on this piece, and I thought I had them almost spot on in my pencils. Again I was so focused on keeping a smooth line during the inking stage that I lost a lot of the subtle angles and curves that make the difference between a leg looking feminine and attractive and looking like a bag of wet cement.

This is why I don't like it when people look down on the more comic-book/cartoony style of drawing. The simple truth is drawing in this style means you have to do a lot more with a lot less. Over-rendering a drawing can hide a million mistakes...but when you have two lines instead of a hundred to draw an arm with...they sure as hell had better be the right two lines.

The main thing I learned from this picture is slightly more 'meta'.

I think that most novice artists, such as myself, get really wrapped up with the idea of 'success'. I like to think about it as 'Kindegartener Fridge Syndrome'. Every time we put pencil to paper we want to create something awesome that we can show off to people.

I think one of the most important things to realise is that in order to become a 'good' artist, you'll draw literally hundreds of thousands of drawings that you'll consider 'failures' in your drawing career. The important thing is to learn from every drawing and move on.

Basically, if this blog wasn't more of a 'personal' drawing journal for me, I wouldn't want anyone to see the above drawing. It's not something I want to show to people as an 'example of my work'. I don't really like it, consider it more failure than success and it will probably spend the rest of it's natural life stuffed into the back of an old sketchbook at the back of my wardrobe.

The important part is that I learned a lot from the mistakes I made, which means that while I'm still not a great artist...I'm a better artist that I was yesterday...and the really important thing to remember is that had I seen this same drawing a year ago, I'd have thought "I wish I could draw like that."

Long story short, your drawing are not your babies and be prepared to spend hours and hours on something that you may just screw up into a ball when you're done.

At my stage the act of drawing and the practice it provides is a million times more important than the actual image I end up with when I'm done.

That's why this drawing, while I still don't like it, is still a lot better than the last drawing of Black Canary that I posted six months ago

Deviantart - A Rant...

2009-03-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

I really, really, really hate DeviantArt.com

DeviantArt works the way almost all other online communities work. They start out as great resources, places to share ideas and get inspired...and then they slowly get taken over by a bunch of retards who think the fact they joined that community before you means they're better than you.

Basically, today you go to deviant art and find little more than a bunch of teenage assholes drawing anime really badly and swapping tutorials despite the fact they have no idea what they're doing.

First of all, Anime fucking sucks. It was designed as an animation style that could be made as cheaply as possible. I think that's why it's so popular right now...it's just so fucking easy to draw. Draw a pair of oversized freak-eyes, ridiculous hair that looks like plastic, a sideways V for a nose and a line for the mouth and you're done. Even better if you start drawing 'chibis', like 99% of the assholes as DeviantArt, you don't even have to worry about learning anatomy.

That's what 90% of deviant art 'artists' do. They draw a standard freak-eyed anime face, a fucking circle for a body, then go around sucking each other's dicks about how awesomely talented they are on each other's galleries.

Oh look, you drew another Naruto/Pokemon/Sailor Moon Chibi! You're the most talented motherfucker in the world! Come check out my galleries and tell me how awesome my Naruto/Pokemon/Sailor Moon Chibis are!

Secondly, when you know absolutely fuck all about a subject, don't write tutorials about it.

Just ten minutes ago I found a 'traditional inking' tutorial written by a guy who thinks traditional inking means tracing your pencils with a fucking sharpie. Nothing on using ink to build depth or form, nothing on varying line width, nothing on how to actually ink...just some asshat who took a picture of a fucking CHIBI then went over his lines with a fucking sharpie and posted it online....and this was followed by four pages of other chibi-drawing fucks telling him how awesome his tutorial was and how big of a genius he is.

Then I looked at another traditional inking tutorial where the creepy fuck not only chose to draw an underage anime girl who looked no older than eight in lingerie...but his inking tutorial consisted of showing how he started with a hard-leaded pencil and then 'inked' with a soft leaded pencil.

A traditional inking tutorial where the guy doesn't even use ink.

What the FUCK?

You know what, I change my mind. I should actually be thankful for DeviantArt because it gathers all the pretentious fuckwits into one place where they can all suck each other's dicks and go on about how awesome they are while drawing (and furiously masturbating over) drawings of eight year old anime girls being raped by tenticles...while leaving the rest of us the fuck alone.

My apologies to the 5-10% of deviant art people who actually have talent and don't consider themselves world class artists because they can draw Ash from Pokemon.

Very Quick Sketch

2009-01-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

Found myself at a loose end this afternoon, so found myself reaching for my sketchbook. This sketch started out as a Dungeons and Dragons style sorceress, and I'm not quite sure what it ended up as. Sorceress? Comicbook Heroine? Someone on their way to a halloween party?

Who cares? It was a throwaway twenty minute sketch.

One of the things I love about just sketching without planning is some of the mistakes you make. I love that her hair is being blown around like she's standing in a gale, yet her robe isn't reacting at all.

Not the best piece I've ever done, but it was fun.

Lessons Learned.

2009-01-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd take a minute to share the best drawing tip you'll ever hear.

There are a million different drawing 'processes' out there, and my advice is simple: Look at all the tutorials and 'how to' books you can, take what you like, discard what you don't...but don't stick with a system that isn't working for you, and don't be afraid to go back to one you've discarded.

When I was first learning how to construct a drawing, I found a figure-drawing tutorial that showed how to construct a figure by essentially drawing a stick-figure with an oval for the ribcage and a tapered cylinder for the pelvis. I used this system for a couple of years and was having a fair amount of success with it.

Then, a few years later I took a 'professional' drawing course that used a far more sophisticated skeleton to block in a figure. I started to use that system and stuck with it for well over a year.

The problem was I never really got the hang of it. I'd spend literally hours just on my basic construction, and then stick to the result even when it was obviously wrong.

Basically, I'd gotten it into my head that the new process was 'better' than my old one, so I stuck with it even when it wasn't working. Finally, and much later sheer frustration drove me back to my old process, and it was literally like flipping a switch. My art improved dramatically overnight. I'd gone back to constructing drawings in a way my brain could easily comprehend.

If you take nothing else from this post, take this:

In your drawing career you'll be told a million times that you're doing things wrong, from the way you compose a drawing to the way you hold your pencil. However, the only 'correct' way to draw is the way that works for you.

Drawing is extremely complicated and what works for one person might not work for you. Find what works, ignore what doesn't,

Shading

2008-08-13T20:33:00.001-07:00

(sorry about the quality of this image, my scanner butchered it)

I thought that today I'd share a little shading technique I like. As usual, this is not intended to be a tutorial or 'how to'. This shading technique is just something I'm playing with and thought I'd share my findings.

The actual technique is simple and works really well for skin tones. The process is simple, you shade your picture by drawing thousands and thousands of tiny, overlapping circles, then blend with a Q-tip.

The are a tips that work well to get the best with this technique:

The first is to use a slightly blunt soft leaded pencil (a HB at least). The second is to only ever use light strokes. If you want a darker tone, use soft strokes, blend and then go over the area again to make it darker. This takes a lot of time, but hard strokes simply don't blend well.

I found it works best to shade only the darkest areas first, then blend that into your lighter areas. Also, use your q-tip in the same way you'd use a paintbrush and use it as if you're painting a three dimensional object. In other words, if you're shading an arm, when you're blending, stroke your q-tip as though you're following the contours of the muscles.

Anyway, I know a lot of people will look at the above image and think this technique is crappy, but please bear in mind that the above image is the result of my first time ever using this technique.

New Sketch

2008-08-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Learned a new technique for drawing eyes, spent a few minutes on the following sketch and really liked it:

No reference, Graphite on copier paper, about 12 mins

Sexism In Comicbooks? Hell No.

2008-08-06T22:45:00.001-07:00

Doing a little late night websurfing, I stumbled across an excerpt from ‘Wizard’s Best of Basic Training’ in a forum.

This is basically a comic-art ‘primer’ style book, with lots of information and tips on how to draw comic book males and females. The excerpt shown focuses mainly on the females.

What surprised me (although it probably shouldn’t) was the absolutely visceral reaction from people on how ‘sexist’ and ‘chauvinist’ the book is. The page is here if you want to check it out, along with the reactions.

What honestly cracks me up is how people can call comic-book females (and by association, ‘best of basic training’) sexist. Sure, the book talks a lot about how to make your female characters look sexy, etc…but I don’t see how that even comes close to ‘sexist’.

Ok, I know that there’s no such thing as an ugly comicbook heroine. They have perfect bodies, tiny waists, gravity defying breasts, thick full lips and tend to wear outfits that are a little revealing, to say the least.

My first reaction to this is that while comicbook females almost exclusively look like Victoria’s Secret models…comic books are also one of the few media where you’re guaranteed to find strong, independent intelligent female characters.

Barbara Gordon, Black Canary, Huntress, Supergirl, Wonderwoman, Spider-Woman…need I go on? All of these are highly intelligent characters and are portrayed as equals to their male counterparts.

The main point I’d like to make here though is if you think comicbook women are sexist…before you decide to comment in a public forum...take a look at the comicbook men.

You see, feminists just love to point at pictures of perfect-bodied comic book women and say “No real women look like that! These women are just hyper-exaggerated male fantasies! This is sexist!”

Keep that in mind and look at the following picture of Superman and Supergirl (drawn by Michael Turner, who took the brunt of the abuse in the above forum):

If you really look at this picture, is the representation of Supergirl any more ‘sexist’ than the representation of Superman?

When was the last time you saw any male with a physique like that? What we have here is a male with zero bodyfat, gigantic muscles, abs you could strike a match on…all wrapped up in an ultra-tight spandex wrapper. Hell, his thigh is probably as big around as my waist! (Oh, and before you latch onto the fact that it’s Superman, but Supergirl…the reason for this is Supergirl is just that…a girl. She’s a teen.)

Anyway, it’s true that the average woman would probably need some major plastic surgery to even come close to her comicbook counterparts…but the average guy could work out 24 hours a day and pump himself full of steroids and still not even come close to looking like Superman.

Basically, you can’t say comicbook females are sexist because comicbook males are represented in exactly the same ‘unattainably perfect’ way…it’s not sexist, it’s just the exaggerated over-the-top style of comic books.

Basically, comicbook women look the way they do because they’re comicbook women. There’s nothing sexist about it. Sure, you can complain at the skimpiness of Supergirl’s skirt…but if I was so inclined, I could complain about Superman’s Spandex.

I mean, those muscles in that ultra-tight outfit? That’s objectifying men, right? No real man could pull off an outfit like that, or even come close to his level of physical perfection. That’s sexist as well, right? I mean, Superman has Super-strength, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about his intelligence or what he’s like as a ‘person’.

In fact, as much as Supergirl is a ‘male fantasy’, but can’t the same be said about Superman? I mean, he’s the most powerful man in the world, but as Clarke Kent he’s a ‘mild mannered’ newspaper reporter who lets Lois Lane take advantage and walk all over him. Powerful, sexy…but completely under the thumb of his girlfriend who he’ll literally fly to the ends of the earth for.

I can imagine the reaction if we swapped Superman and Lois Lane’s sex. A Superheroine who lets her boyfriend walk all over her? Can throw planets out of orbit, but will do anything her boyfriend says on a whim?

What it boils down to is this: Who wants to read a comicbook about a Superhero with a beer-gut, hairy back and pidgeon-chest, who fights crime with his female partner who has the body of a high school lunch lady and fights crime in sweatpants?

No-one, that’s who.

Yes, so comicbook females have gigantic boobs, perfect bodies and fight crime in revealing outfits. What is also true is that comicbook males have gigantic muscles, chiseled bodies and fight crime in spandex. What's the difference?

Sexism only occurs when one sex is treated differently from the other. Both females and males are represented as over-the-top caricatures of their sex in comic books. That's just the way comic books are, and there's nothing sexy about it.

More lessons learned

2008-07-25T20:50:00.001-07:00

Graphite on copier paper. Total time Approx 1hr.

I quite like how this one turned out. You'll have to take my word for it that it looks a lot better in person than on a computer screen. I only have a cheapo scanner and it made the shading look a lot rougher that it was.

I learned two important things from this one.

The first is that one single, tiny line can be the difference between something looking good and looking terrible. If you look at the neck on the right you'll see a tiny line coming down from the jaw to delineate the neck. I spent a long time adjusting the shoulders trying to get the neck right, and nothing was working. It was only when I added that line that everything seemed to come together.

I 'missed' that line at first because it was only shown in the photograph I was copying by a shadow. This is another great argument to draw from life whenever you can. Lighting on a picture can rob you off a lot of the information and detail that you need for a successful drawing.

This leads me to the next lesson learned...there's only so much you can do with contour drawing.

I originally intended this to be just a simple line drawing, but when I'd finished, it just didn't look right.

Finally out of frustration, I scanned in my line drawing and superimposed it over the picture I was using as reference to see where I'd gone wrong. Obviously, they weren't a complete match (and I had to resize the drawing to the same scale as the pic)...but they where close enough that I couldn't see what I'd done wrong.

It finally dawned on me that without shading, some drawings just look completely wrong. As you can see, even on the shaded drawing above the legs look a little weird...but I'm still not very good at shading and there's only so much you can do with a HB pencil on copier paper.

If you want to see what I mean, find a picture online and just trace the outline. Chances are it will look 'off'...simply because you're not giving the eye enough information to show the figure's form.

I should also point out that I never attempt to create an exact copy of the reference picture when I'm not drawing from memory. I just use them to get the basic pose and musculature. I tend to choose reference pictures to work out particular problems. For example, in the above drawing I wanted to see how to draw the musculature and fat-system when the ribcage is at an extreme angle to the pelvis.

Just as a final note, I used a new technique for the shading above. I did rough shading with my pencil and then used home made 'tortillon' to blend the shading to make it a smoother. (Basically I tore off a strip of paper and rolled it up into a very tight tube, then used the end to blend the graphite)

The 'Missing Step'

2008-07-21T00:16:00.000-07:00

Ever notice that all figure drawing tutorials always seem to be missing a step?

Step One: Draw a stick figure. (picture of a stick figure)

Step Two: ‘Flesh out’ the stick figure using simple shapes. (picture of a stick figure covered in spheres, cylinders etc).

Step Three: Add the details and musculature!

Step three is then followed by an absolutely perfect figure drawing with every muscle in place, perfect hair, clothing with realistic folds, photorealistic shading, etc, etc.

I don’t know about you, but to me this is like buying a book on driving that says:

Step One: Get in your car.

Step Two: Insert your key and turn it clockwise to start the engine.

Step Three : Drive wherever you want to go!

The reason for this is simple. Books with titles like “Learn to draw in five easy lessons!” or “Draw like the Pros in four easy steps” tend to sell.

Face it. Would you buy a book entitled “Learn to draw over a period of years while learning hundreds of concepts and spending thousands of hours practicing!”?

No, very few people would, because everyone is after that ‘hidden secret’. That magical ‘one thing’ that the professionals know and keep jealously guarded. That’s why you can buy books that will teach you to draw, play a musical instrument or let you lose weight with zero effort or commitment.

Unfortunately, in the real world, there are no magical ‘hidden secrets’ that make everything easy. There’s just no way to go from zero ability to master overnight.

With that understood, I’m now going to give that ‘hidden step’, the one that all those tutorials miss out. Unfortunately, this step isn’t ‘hidden’ because it’s a magical secret. It’s hidden because it’s not just one step, and it involves a lot of practice and effort…and as I said above, practice and effort doesn’t sell books.

So let me begin at the start. This is the technique that worked (well, more precisely is working) for me.

The first step is to learn the ‘eight heads rule’. Look it up on google and you’ll find a few thousand tutorials on this. This will teach you to draw an anatomically correct ‘simplified skeleton’…basically a stick figure with a basic ribcage, skull and pelvis. Basically, you can’t draw people until you know what goes where, what fits to what and how big everything is in proportion to everyone else.

Now, if you’ve already been doing a little reading, you might think that the ‘8 heads rule’ isn’t for you. 8 heads is ‘comic-book hero’ big, and if you’re wanting to draw more realistic people (between 6 and 7 ‘heads tall) it might not seem ideal.

Well, the truth is that the 8 heads rule is the best model (at least in my opinion) to learn by. Given that the head is the standard unit of measurement in figure drawing, the 8 heads rule puts a noticeable ‘landmark’ at each ‘head’ (One head down from the chin is the nipple like, one head down from that is the navel and so on and so on). In other words, it makes learning easier and it makes things easier in the long run to learn the 9 heads rule and then adapt it later…rather than attempt to learn proportion without any hard and fast rules.

The next step is to learn to ‘flesh out’ the figure with simple shapes. The head becomes a sphere, an arm becomes two connected cylinders, etc.

This is important because it gets you thinking in three dimensions. Only drawing in two dimensions (seeing an arm as two lines rather than a solid object) is the number one reason that most beginning artists’ drawing fail. When you learn to think in three dimensions, not only does it automatically give your drawings more realism and depth, it makes drawing dynamic figures easier.

For example, say you’re drawing someone holding their hand out towards you. If you’re still thinking two dimensionally, it gets very difficult to get the foreshortening right. If you’re thinking in three dimensions and seeing that arm as two connected cylinders, it’s much easier to work out the perspective in your mind’s eye.

Now we get to that missing step.

You’ve learned and mastered the simplified skeleton and roughing out the body with simple shapes. Most tutorials say ‘just fill in the details’…but unless you’re a surgeon and have a total grasp of anatomy, where those muscles are, what shape they are, and how they change shape depending on the pose ‘just filling in the details’ is a tall order.

This is where you draw from life.

Ok, I know this isn’t a very popular idea. The whole point of learning figure drawing is so you don’t have to use a model. Also, what’s the point in learning all that other stuff if you’re just going to be drawing a model or copying photographs?

Well, the first two are extremely important and you’ll realize this the second you start to draw your first picture using some sort of reference (either a model or a picture). For simplicity, let me assume you’re going to be using pictures from magazines or from the internet.

Start your drawing, but first, rough out the pose using everything you learned in those first two steps. Don’t worry about detail, and use that simplified skeleton and those simple shapes.

If you’ve ever tried copying a photograph before learning the eight heads rule (and practicing it, of course) you’ll be amazed and just how quickly and easily you get the basic shape down on paper.

So now you should have that basic ‘mannequin’ model on paper. Now is the time to get into the details. The difference is that this time, instead of having some tutorial saying “Just do it”, you have a live model or photograph of the figure you’ve drawn which means you can get that musculature and those details just right.

The trick here is not to just mindlessly copy. Treat each drawing as a learning experience. Instead of just putting down lines, think about what you’re doing and make notes (mental or otherwise) throughout the whole process.

For example, you should be thinking like “Ok, so the chest muscle connects to the shoulder muscle like this, the collar bone curves like this and meets the shoulder like this...” ...Well, you get the idea.

Then just do as many drawing like this as possible, using as many different poses as possible, all the time building up a mental databank of how the human body is put together. This means that the next time you do a totally original ‘directly from your mind’ drawing, you’ll know exactly what those muscles look like, how they work together and how they change shape.

It takes time and it takes practice, but as the wise old saying goes: “There’s the easy way and the hard way…the main difference between them being that the hard way actually works.”

To close today, let me give you some final tips:

Firstly, don’t get into the mindset that every drawing has to be a ‘finished’ work of art that you could frame and hang on your wall with pride. You don’t even have to like the finished piece…just think of them as studies. My sketchbooks are filled with odd drawings of arms, legs, noses and all manner of different body parts because I’ve sat down and drawn them just to work out how to draw them. I have close to fifteen pages of half a chest, with an arm in all kinds of weird positions so I could work out how the chest muscles stretch and contract in each different position.

Secondly, pick the models or the pictures for these studies carefully. A picture of someone in a baggy sweatshirt and jeans might be easier to draw, but you’re not going to learn anything about musculature from it. Of course, if you’re currently trying to learn how to draw realistic folds and shapes in clothing, a baggy sweatshirt and jeans would be perfect. Just remember you need to learn what things look like under the clothes first because it’s hard to draw clothes that look and hang correctly if you don’t know he framework underneath…this means nudes.

If you’re uncomfortable drawing nudes (I remember being 14 years old and having to explain to my mother why my sketchbook was filled with pictures of naked men and women)…there are plenty of other alternatives. Gymnasts and wrestlers are a good place to start because they tend to wear very tight, form-fitting clothing…and of course tend to be in great shape with very defined muscles. Also remember that when drawing nudes, you don’t actually have to draw the genetalia if it makes you uncomfortable. Just do your drawing as if the model is wearing a skin-tight body suit.

Finally, don’t use other people’s artwork to draw from. You need to learn what the human body looks like and how to represent that on paper. If you copy someone else’s work, you’re just going to end up copying their lines rather than learning how to create them yourself.

Above all, have fun and don’t expect to get it on the first try. It’s going to take thousands and thousands of drawings before you master figure drawing, and even then you may need to pull out a reference picture once in a while to get an extreme pose worked out.

Like I said at the start, it’s not easy and it’s going to take practice. Even the world’s great professionals don’t always get it right the first time, so that will be my final tip. If a drawing just isn’t working, don’t be afraid to crush that bit of paper into a ball and start over…you’d be surprised how many professionals still do that even after drawing professionally for decades.