life drawing

watercolor on paper

A few life drawing samples from the latter half of 2007.

TAGS: Ski Trip

Black India ink over light blue Col-erase pencil construction on copier paper
January 1994
8 x 10 inch

The ink I had done with technical pen, which was typical for me at the time. Tech. pens like Koh-I-Noor's well-known brand Rapidograph work great, but you got to maintain them so that they don't become ruined with dried shellac in the ink. I actually have a Steadtler set from my engineering days.

Avoiding clean-up of the small parts of tech. pens is one of the reasons I now ink with a round lettering brush.

TAGS May 31 & June 1, 1993

5/31: I think it odd now, that Monster is staring at Guy's cap or at least the back of his head and not really out to right field. Maybe Monster loves that cap?

6/01: I think I broke some rule of American sequential story telling in panel 2 having Monster run right to left, and the left to right in the third panel. Other wise, the third panel with the slow-motion trip is one of my favorites.
That's Nick (skunk) playing first base.

Pin Backs

Bic® multi-color medium point ball-point ink on gray paper.

2001

In the Fall of 2001, I was working on my third series of Hard Rock Cafe cloisonné pins for pin company Pin USA. Like the two previous series, each different location required a different design featuring a pin-up girl in the iconic white shirt/skirt uniform.

The previous series kept close to real human proportions. I think they had been well served by other artists who copied the works of Varga, Petty and Elvgren - possibly to exhaustion. Admittedly inspired by these and other pin-up artists, I still attempted to discover something new with each drawing, and with each final piece of art in the size neighborhood of 3 cm (1.18 in.), strong poses with clear silhouettes were key.

For the third series, I proposed taking a more cartoony look. Above are some studies. Hard Rock preferred to continue with the direction that had been established.

TAGS: Ski Trip

Medium point, green ball-point pen on paper
January 1994
Sketchbook drawing

This is the rough layout for the first (I believe) assemblage of all 31 "Tags" characters intended for my self-produced newsletter, Monotony.

Jodie

a: Jodie Foster, sketchbook drawing from photo
Bic® medium 4-color ball point pen on paper
June 1994

b: detail of same

Since some time in 1991, judging by my sketchbooks, I've favored the Bic® medium point, 4-color ball point pen as my daily writing instrument - that's the one with the blue barrel that has black, blue, red and green retractable pen nibs. It's compact and the ball-point ink dries quickly. The charms of the orange barrel fine-point version are lost on me.

After doing this sketch, I had the notion of making "office-product media" art - basically creating "art" with ball point pens, highlighters and white out on 8.5 x 11" copier paper. That never really blossomed as a real pursuit. Probably because, the medium point takes so long to fill large areas of color, in addition to the obvious color limitations.

Besides my sketch books, I do advocate the use of the letter-size sheet. To stroll through an office supply store, it evident that storage of this size page is just so convenient.

Speaking of daily writing instruments, the Uni-Ball® Vision fine point rollerball pens are nice. Again, the smaller ultra-fine points ill suit me. The inks are bright and flow steadily through out the pens' live. A wetter ink than that of ball-points, solid coverage is achieved quicker and easier.

TAGS May 3 & 4, 1993

Softball, the great equalizer. Isn't that what they say? No?

Guy (Dalmatian) puts together a summer league. If I had thought ahead, I'd have planned and known the team line ups. As it was, to serve a four-panel strip I didn't, since there wasn't going to be enough space to show more than 4 or 5 players a strip. I also didn't think this story line would carry on as long as it did.

A three-fingered fielder's mitt - I think now a three-fingered hockey goalie's mitt would have been easier to procure. I may have been funnier. Darn my lack of sports knowledge. Darn also my mis-spelling of "mitt".

Masthead of my Domain

Hey!

I've designed a new masthead for this thing!

Self Portrait

digital color over scan of pencil.
2007

I drew this to decorate the shingle (name plate) for my cubical. If I remember correctly, the creative group of which I'm part had been in the new building on Turner’s Atlanta campus of cable networks for a few months. As installed, all of the name plates were the same black san-serif name and cube number on the same mottled blue of what I guess is Kinkos resumé stock.

As soon as I had time to spare, up went my 7" x 16" panel of self-expression - with the requisite information, of course.

Since then, in my pursuit of creating a more personal work environment (or just for the sake of making discreet bits of trouble) I have done the same for 4 of my co-workers - 4.5 if you count the one that has stalled because the person was unsatisfied with the caricature.


So what does this say about how I see myself?
1) Asian with black side parted hair and a cowlick.
2) Wears a considerably large wrist watch.
3) Right-handed drawer with a blue pencil.
4) Disney fan? (The pose is a mirror of Mickey’s off the cover of The Art of Walt Disney, more or less.)
5) Supplier of free chocolates.

That last part, while true, has nothing to do with the drawing.