Big and Small

I know it's not the most interesting of structures - I probably should have added more projections and cut-aways but the look of the building wasn't as important to me as to trying to convey the size of the thing.  

If I were to make other changes, I'd make the forest more jungle-y behind and to the right of the structure.  I like how the vegetation is growing on the thing, but it could have been more so, but as it is, it makes you wonder if the structure (is it a tower or gate or lived-in building?) is going to ruin, or of we have made friends with the plants and can now live in harmony with our chlorophyll filled brethren.  I also like the really small, smudges that could be interpreted as birds.  I can almost hear them.

One thing I worked hard on this one is the high contrast part right at the base of the structure.  I wanted the viewer's eye drawn here, which I hoped would make one feel more pulled into the drawing, into the tower's opening.

And then there are the happy accidents.  Who doesn't love 'em?! Heck, they are what got me drawing more and more.  Check out the trees at the bottom right.  See how the shading is comprised of horizontal, not diagonal lines?  Believe it or not, I've never done horizontal shade lines.  I think it really works here.  Those lines both suggest leaves but also push the vegetation further back into the distance.  

Cave Man

OK, I'm NOT making any comment about video game players being cave men.  This is from an idea I've got rolling around in my head.  With luck (and no small amount of effort) I'd like to turn the idea into more - an ongoing story, but for now, well... this is it.

The pose turned out well.  Like the dragon in the previous post, the shaded contour lines really helped define the form and suggest some lighting.  It looks good around his body and arms and the near leg, but I kind of messed up around his right shin and other leg - the shaggy body hair helped cover up what didn't look so good.  The hands are ok but need to be blockier, to look heavier with squarish cross sections.  If I could I would have erased the inked hands and taken another kick at it.  I spent a while trying to get the video game controller looking right but it still doesn't.  It occurred to me how little I've really looked at one!  I'd say the style here was inspired by Will Eisner's - his drawing style and character design and shading and sometimes wonderful messiness.

Here Be Dragons

There are some things that I keep coming back to drawing.  I try to move on and come up with something TOTALLY DIFFERENT, but when I need to fill a page, sometimes it's the tried and true that appears again.  

With Chinese New Year upon us, I guess I hit on something timely!

I was quite pleased with this result.  The blue pencil rough was clear and provided a good sense of how the perspective and form should be - I wanted it to look like the dragon was flying up, but then turning back, perhaps getting ready to blow fire at us.  I did some contour lines on the body to suggest the form and perspective and then added lots more in the inking.  I intentionally drew the dragon in a figure eight as I wanted to keep it all on the page.

I tried to shade the inside of the mouth and nostrils such that it looked like light was glowing from inside.  I was fairly successful there, but the ink from the pen was a bit too forthcoming and it got too dark too fast.  The excited, dog-like eyes turned out well.  I like the horny knobs for eyebrows and the loose limbs are a bit reminiscent of a sea otter but perhaps a bit too languid.  Nice tail end.  Looks sharp.

Flip Horizontal

Ok, this one I'm pleased with!

The rough went well - the character looked good and the words were alright. I figured the joke would work.  I was having a bit of difficulty deciding how or where I was going to put the plants (these "Growing Concern" comics are for an Orchid newsletter, so the plants usually show up in there somehow).

I had an idea that we needed to see the whole doorway, and then I realized that I could have shadows of the plants cast on a nearby wall, thereby showing them and their size without really showing them. Brilliant!

Before I inked, I had another realization. Since we, here in the west, generally read text (and comics) left to right, it would be better if I flipped the whole thing horizontally, so you'd see the woman looking at the ticks on the door frame, then read her words and then see the shadows as opposed to seeing the shadows first as I had in mind when doing the roughs.

I really like how the lines on the woman are.  Very flowing, nice thick and thin, the shapes in and of her body, arms and head are amusing and her left hand is good.  I like her funny little feet.

A Plus, Woodhead!

He looked just like...

To totally understand where this one comes from, I give you this part of an article from your friends and mine at Wikipedia...

"The Person from Porlock was an unwelcome visitor to Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his composition of the poem Kubla Khan in 1797. Coleridge claimed to have perceived the entire course of the poem in a dream (possibly an opium-induced haze), but was interrupted by this visitor fromPorlock (a village in the South West of England, near Exmoor) while in the process of writing it. Kubla Khan, only 54 lines long, was never completed. Thus "Person from Porlock", "Man from Porlock", or just "Porlock" are literary allusions to unwanted intruders who disrupt inspired creativity."      

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock

I hope this "Person from Porlock" (PFP) will be a continuing character.  He can be so many things, the devil, a trickster character, a disrupter, a creativity killer, a personification of procrastination and probably a bunch of other things, but judging from the amount of difficulty I had in coming up with a pleasing design for the man himself, this may be the first and last we see of him!

I was going for a Disney-like style and I wanted the young, long-haired man (Coleridge) to be frightened even horrified by PFP , which I think I successfully achieved, but I intended to suggest Coleridge's face was illuminated by looking at PFP's face, but amid all my attempts to generate a design for PFP and then my hurry to finish the inking, I didn't do the illumination - the way the final piece was staged, it wouldn't have made sense anyway - we need to see the shoulders and back of PFP's head to indicate where that glow might be coming from.

My problem was that I couldn't come up with a body type that worked.  Who is this PFP? Is he young or old, stooped or huge and fat or muscular?  I wonder if I'm the first to ask that question!

As for what was going on in each of the 6 images above... 

1) Initial composition.  I could imagine a high angle looking down on Colerige, but it all felt too tight.  

2) Working out a design for Colerige.  I only did 2 drawings as I didn't want to spend too long on this piece, and then I spent hours working on PFP!

3, 4, and another that was erased out) Trying to work out a good design and pose for PFP. Notice he's holding a mask away from his face with his right hand.  I like this idea and may go with it if I ever do more.

5) Actually a compilation of 3 drawings, a background, Coleridge and PFP's hand holding up the envelope.  Nice high angle behind PFP, reused the drawing of Colerige from page 2.

6) The final inked result.  

I gotta say, I'm not too pleased with this one - don't care for the inking, I liked the rough lines better than the final, I wanted to show more of PFP (like in page 1) but it's done and out there now and as we all know, one reason for doing this blog is just to do the stuff and put it out there and shove out my attempts at perfection.