3/1/2014 Sketches and Stuff I've Been Up To

 

 

 Been quite busy these days.  Work's been crazy, and I've been trying to get together my personal work. I haven't forgotten to do sketches whenever I have the chance though.

11/30/2013 Inking and Writing

In the midst of writing, I got a chance to do a bit of inking.  Here's a quick 1 hour sketch!

10/5/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 22

Didn't get a chance to update last night because I went out drinking.  The bar we went to had ridiculously beautiful servers working there.  Inspired me to draw this!

10/3/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 21

Under the sea~!

10/2/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 20

Intense negotiations

10/1/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 18 & 19

Making up for yesterday!  Here's a twofer!

9/16/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 4

Getting better with economizing my space.  I'm going to try buying some new inks and use some of the new pen nibs I bought a few months ago.

I find myself getting a bit stuck in trying to create far back grounds.  Once I draw an interior, I find myself not allotting enough time into thinking about what's happening beyond windows.  I know how I would deal with these problems if I were painting, but pen and ink being so unforgiving...

Anyway, the journey continues!

9/12/2013 More Inking Studies

captain of the merman swim team

Now with the comic all finished up, I find myself free to do more of these inking studies.  I'm glad I get to do these, because I'm finding out a lot about inking just by experimenting with different tools again.  I've been married to the idea of using dip pens and brushes, but I find i get much more predictable and cleaner results from using felt tips and microns.  This allows me to think less about the tools and just concentrate on creating interesting forms, shapes and lines. 

More of these to come, hopefully.

1/27/2013 Still In Progress

Hello Folks!  I'm staying true to my word, and I'm making another post WITHOUT the 3 month interim.  I'm just working hard on the comic whenever I have free time, and those who have made comics before know that this is a slow process.  Anyhow, it seems like I'm posting another desk shot!

A few pages I've been working on over the weekend.

 More drawings ahead!

8/24/2012 Update

Slowly making progress!  I didn't want to keep everyone out of the loop, so I thought I'd post. 

I've been spending too much time working on not being unemployed, that progress has been much slower than I had hoped.  But no more!  I'm going to concentrate more on making this comic become a reality!

Cars and Stuff

 First off, sorry for the long absence!  I like to post here as often as I can, but I've been working on storyboards for the last couple weeks.  Well, I just got done with that a few days ago, so now I'm moving on to doing some concepts.  Took me a couple days, but I finally decided on a shape for the car that I want to be in my comic.  Couldn't really think up a good name for it, so for now it's simply called the R.  

NSFW speed paint

Woke up in a painting frenzy for some reason.  I should have been working on my storyboards, but I decided on doing a painting instead.  Still got lots of time until the day is over, so I guess I'll be getting to those storyboards!

Hit the jump to see the painting.  Warning! NSFW

Inks and Screen Tone

Slowly getting the hang of this.  Basically the problem with the last batch of screen tones was that the resolution was too low.  When I photographed this ink painting, I split it up into 9 sections and then auto-aligned them in photoshop.  With more pixels to play with, I was able to keep the dot matrices small enough to not compete with the line work. 

Findings from the Inking Laboratory

Today's challenge was cars and motorcycles.  I'm getting a little better at creating "mechanical noise", and there's really no easy way around it.  You just have to build up a vocabulary of mechanical looking jargon and figure out where you have to place it.  You can build this vocabulary much easier when inking and painting than graphite, and im not really sure why yet.  Possibly because the mechanical noise you create just becomes a grey mess.

Another thing I need to practice is not to get too zealous.  The inks on these should be a bit more blank, and I have to stop myself from trying to shade with cross hatching.  Shading on mechanical things should be done with screen toning (especially if it's surface color, shadows could be done through cross hatching though).

A few more useful tips to consider:

-Be patient.
-Cannot stress enough, do not use a dip pen when using a ruler.  The ink bead gets under the ruler and ruins the drawing.
-When drawing long lines, spin the paper around so the line is consistent with the arch of your arm.  It's nearly impossible to draw a clean line if your drawing a long curve that bows towards your own elbow.  Spin it around so it bows away from your arm, and use anatomy to your advantage!
-You should know how to draw wheels without stencils (with graphite), but just use stencils when inking
-Microns seems to bleed much less than Sharpie felt tip pens
-Be patient

I still have to work on getting better at drawing wheels.  I have a few stencils, but they're never the right size/pinch to draw the wheel angles I want.

Next episode, we shall have people ON vehicles!

5/9/2012 WIP

Slowly chipping away at this one. 

5/7/2012 WIP

 
This drawing is a total mess at this point, but I gotta keep motivated, and keep posting!

As some of you can see, The blog is going through some redesigns.  I've been trying my hands in animation, so I thought I'd show that off a little bit.  Nothing's at 100% yet, so keep visiting, it's just going to get better!