I found this strange seed tonight at the playground. Ilya was digging up the sand, filling up a pail to make a cake and she uncovered this thing. So I took it home and sketched it a bit–and then played with it a bit too :)
Well, it’s been one of those weekends. Yesterday, I had a totally short lunch (yes I work on Saturdays–but I get Monday’s off)–so I just drew a few random sketches. Today, I did a quick Tezuka character–though I don’t know the characters name:
So yesterday, I (sort of) randomly drew a portrait for my daily doodle. I showed my wife and she was like, “Why didn’t you draw a picture of me or Ilya?” and I was like, “yeah… uh… I already thought of that. That’s what I’m drawing tomorrow.” So today, here’s a sketch of my wife. Beware that it’s a bit rough and the mouth and eyes didn’t turn out like I wanted. I’m going to ease off portraits for a while before getting around to drawing Ilya. I want to focus on building more of a comic book style form–and get better at shading. I have no intention of drawing portraits very often anyway–I’m going through a few drawing tutorials and haven’t quite gotten to those parts yet. So tomorrow, no portrait.
I went back to the art store to pick up some missing pencils. When I first went to the art store in August, I didn’t know the difference between pencil grades and I didn’t think I even wanted to learn much about pencil shading, which I’m still working on (a lot) so I just grabbed a range (6B, 2B, B, HB, F, H, 2H, 6H). They didn’t have anything beyond 6 in either direction so I figured I was getting the spread.
But I figured I should fill the gaps so I got the missing ones–or so I thought. After I left (and the store closed), I realized that when I reached into the 4H box, I grabbed an HB. So I’m still missing a 4H and I’d like to get an 8B or 9B (or maybe just some charcoal)… anyway:
(yay pencils)
I’ve got to spend more time with Manga Studio before I get the hang of inking my sketches but I figured I should at least pull out the 2B and 6B and darken up this one on paper:
My friend John Griffin (a musician from Tennessee) asked me to draw him a profile picture today. We’ll this is my first lunch break attempt:
I’ll have to get some more practice turning John into a comic character as he will appear, playing guitar on the sidewalk, as a cameo in my first graphic novel.
Got a little more time tonight to sketch so I went for a page of forward faces. Maybe tomorrow I’ll draw profile shots.
Continuing in the Marvel book, here are some cars. I like to sketch out with a 6H so they are pretty darn light but then I feel a little more free to just let lines go rather than be all meticulous. I want to get in the habit of drawing lots of rough sketches, scanning and inking over using my pen tablet. But I need my scanner, which is in Seattle. Soon.
Also, since Rob Guillory is freaking awesome and I’m totally obsessed with this comic “Chew”, which he illustrates to John Layman’s killer scripts, I figured I’d do a little learning from the master and sketch out a Tony Chu (I learn best through imitation). I love the way Rob angles features. It’s a really fun yet intense style.
You can find Chew here: http://chewcomic.blogspot.com/ (the chew blog) and here: http://amzn.to/bXCqBY (Amazon).
And examples of Rob Guillory’s sketches of Chew: http://bit.ly/aHz8EzMakes
Finding it tough to get time to draw around here. Had a really fun day with the family though. Got settled in the living room with bad lighting but managed to sketch this out before getting distracted again:
Last week, Lifehacker asked “What’s in your backpack?”
Well, I finally got time to dump it out and take a photo. Here’s what I carry around when I go to work at a coffee shop or elsewhere:
Among many other books on comic book making, I’ve got a copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, which I’m going to start using for some practice.
I’m no gun aficionado so pardon the lack of finesse, but here’s my sketches for today as guided from that book.
Looks like I need to buy a ruler and practice this a few dozen more times ;)
He lives in Seattle.
@KillerComics
