What I Drew Sunday, June 28th - Top 3

Sunday’s comic book themed edition of “What Shall I Draw Today?” fielded plenty of multiple character suggestions. The trade off, of course, is that the more complex the ideas are, the longer it takes for me to complete each one of them and thus the fewer that I am able to squeeze in an eight-hour session. I’ve long since abandoned any ambitions that my WSIDT output success should be measured by volume.

Here are the top 3 liked pieces from Sunday:

#1 - Usagi Yojimbo, Samurai Jack and Lone Wolf & Cub having a tea ceremony: suggestion by @rockamola

If I can make it work, I will design a WSIDT sketch layout taking priority cues from the literal suggestion. For example, the first named character is primary and can be the largest, or the focal point, or the first/left-most character or she/he gets the punchline. Being the left-most character is, of course, in-line with left-to-right written languages like English. Don’t give me too much credit then, that the character order is correct according to the Japanese right-to-left way of writing. The reversal of the order just seemed correct in my head.

As the first sketch of the day, I drew this the Saturday prior, so that I could post it at 12 noon EDT. It’s a cheat, but I think the experience is better than having my first post an hour or so after my stated start time. As with many WSIDT suggestions, this piece had me taking a crash course on some of the characters, namely the Lone Wolf and Cub series and the Usagi Yojimbo saga. Not to mention Japanese tea ceremonies. Thank you Internet. Thank you YouTube. Still, I don’t doubt that I’ve depicted a detail or two inaccurately.

To the far right, I’ve included one of Usagi Yojimbo’s comrades, Chizu. At least, I thought that’s who I was drawing. One commenter identified her to be Tomoe Ami. Her inclusion had everything to do with having only seen women host tea ceremonies in my brief amount of research.

Not that I can do much to correct this piece, but in the interest of my education, if you can point any out inaccuracies, please do so kindly in the comments.

#2 - Black Widow on The Dating Game: suggestion by Kinzey Freels

I can only guess that this assortment of characters is what the suggester had in mind; namely casting the three hidden bachelors as actual comic or movie characters that have had romantic connections to Natasha. Here I chose Hawkeye (Clint Barton), Daredevil (Matt Murdoch) and the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes). American super-hero comics have long had an inequity of male to female characters. Natasha’s love life is mostly the result of being a young, single woman in Marvel Comics.

The camera angle is intentional to maximize Black Widow, and make the entire scene less wide compared with a straight on audience point of view.

I had thought to include a caricature of Jim Lange, original host of “The Dating Game” from the 1960s, but recasting Stan Lee as the game show host seemed a nice and possibly clever touch.

There’s a not-so-hidden Spidey head in the sketch.

#3 - White Violin: suggestion by @assortedvariety

The actual suggestion was “Anything from The Umbrella Academy!” In my ignorance of the Dark Horse published comic series, I chose the easy route of drawing just one “anything” landing on one with a distinctive design as judged by a quick internet image search.

In drawing White Violin, a.k.a. Number Seven, I instinctualy happened on stylistic result that is  in part Marc Davis’s Tinker Bell and in part something of the fairies from Walt Disney’s Fantasia. With a little better layout planning, I perhaps could have kept the entire violin within frame. The all white character necessitated a ground color. I chose brown, because of it being neutral.

As the piece is small and simply of single figure, it surprised me that the accrued the third highest number of like from the day’s work.

Here are the rest of the 6 drawn on Sunday:

“Snoopy as Captain America”

Suggestion by @benmcdermott93

“SHAZAM meeting He-Man”
Suggestion by @jazzatron5000

“Zatanna Meeting Scarlet Witch”
Suggestion by @jonmpeterson

All of these and more original piece of art will be for sale at my next comic convention showing, which, honestly, I don’t know will happen this year.

The next official WSIDT session is scheduled for Sunday, July, 26th. However, stay tuned for a special, experimental version in early July.

Thank you to everyone who pitched their fun drawing suggestions. Thank you for following my blog and/or Instagram (@Monstergram7) and/or Monster Enterprises Facebook page. Thank you for liking.

All: Black ink and color pencil.

“Tea Ceremony” on watercolor paper. 17.78cm  x 12.70cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)
“Dating Game” on Bristol Board. 17.78cm  x 12.70cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)

“White Violin“  on Bristol Board. 6.35 cm x 8.89 cm  (2.50 in. x 3.50 in.)