life drawing

ink on paper

2014

I’ve attended three life drawing sessions this year so far. No, not exactly a regular schedule, but it’s more than I’d done in the last two years.

I picked up a pen for sketching as so it’s packaging billed. After only three half-hour sessions the fiber tip is still pointy and the ink is black. It’s still early in the evaluation process. 

Steampunk girl

Rough sketch
red pencil on paper

detail

black ink on paper

Here I was inspired by the weekly themes organized by PinupArena.

[digital color @ tumblr]

Monday Morning Sketches - Feb. 10, 2014

“What do you do in a Monday morning meeting at Disney?”

answer: “Listen attentively, of course.”

All:
Black ball point pen ink on ruled paper.
12.70 cm  x  17.78 cm  (5.00 in.  x  7.00 in.)

Challenge on the Mount

Panel 1 of a one page comic done for a friend.
18.10 cm  x  8.57 cm  (7.125 in.  x  3.375 in.)
Red pencil and black ink on Bristol board.

Yes, the composition of this panel turned out to be nearly identical to the Tuff-Girl mini-poster I did for last year’s Dragon*Con. [flyer] [sketch] I didn’t fight it, because for this panel it was the same solution for the same set of requirments:
a) 1 armed, charging warrior.
b) 1 winged dragon.
c) Rocky/ mountainous landscape.
d) Set huge dragon in distance with perspective to keep as much of dragon in frame as possible.
e) Employ standard Amercan left-to-right read direction.
f) Horizontal layout.

I did, however, add a couple of dead bodies to the left.

For the dragon design, I tried to work in a more snake like head with pouches under its jaw for the glands that might produce combustible venom.

AweMazInc

AweMazInc (derived from Awesome, Amazing, Incredible) approached me in the spring of 2011 following my appearance at WonderCon to draw there three members as superheroes.

AweMazInc brands themselves as “Social Media Superheroes.” If you judge me by my irregular if not infrequent blog postings, minus 2 and a half years, then you can surmise that I’m not/was not very good at the social media thing. However, add the “Superhero” aspect and I’m interested.

I don’t know why social media needs super heroes. I can’t imagine how one in social media trouble would procure super heroing services. If it make you feel better about your social media goings on, then twitter well knowing there are superheroes for that.

You can follow AweMazInc on Facebook.

[color @ tumblr]

New Pen

TAGS July 27 & 28, 1994

07/27: Fun o’clock A.M.

07/28: Better with Bacon.

July 27: In the summer, Disneyland host a little Cast Member team building activity that is the canoe races. Before the sun rises, well before the main gates open to the day’s guests, teams clamor into the Davy Crocket Explorer canoes and are timed in one circuit around Tom Sawyer Island. There is the men’s, women’s and co-ed divisions, but wouldn’t you know it that the D.C.E. Cast Members invariably take the men’s prize every year. 

It’s tough pulling a canoe through the waters of the Rivers of America. It’s tough getting eight to twelve people to synchronize their rowing. Finding eight to twelve people to form a team is difficult. I often thought the most difficult thing to do was waking up early enough.

The TAGS equivalent to the canoe races are the hand car races on Jebidia S. Coyote’s Sidewindin’ Hand Cars. Hand cars being the things requiring people to pump a crank to it to roll along train tracks really isn’t a viable attraction for folks on their vacations, nor for a company worried about liabilities. Not to mention that at four riders per hand car, it wouldn’t be much of a “people eater”.

It is, for a comic strip, sufficiently physical and has potential for some visual gags.

July 28: Stacy’s diner (introduced in the March 08, 1994 strip) is the perfect place for teams to cool down after a heated hand car race and have some breakfast. 

If hand car races require more than a minimum of eight people on a team, then I suppose it’s some sort of relay race. 

Al (beagle, 4th appearance), Bingo (snake, 4)

Vitual Royality

Having been back at Disney after several years at Cartoon Network, I’ve resurrected intrest in Royality. This you may have suspected from the previous posts of a Frozen drawing and the Belle and Beast illustration.

Here’s a montage of some of the Disney princesses in the Royality style taken from a note book. (L-R: Snow White, Rapunzel, Pocahontas, Cinderella, Cinderella doing laundry, Rapunzel, Jasmine mad, Eilonwy with Hen Wen).

Nothing may come of it, but they’re fun to draw almost anything in my sketch and note books is good blog fodder.

Good, Better, Beast

update from HNY+1:

Check out the finished color image @ tumblr.

I made this image especially to decorate my office nameplate. I felt it had to be Disney Princess related since I expect to be doing a lot of those kinds of drawings. Having the Beast at the drawing board then fell out naturally. At first the drawing only included Beast, Belle and the furniture property. In the few days leading up to hand inking it, I felt it lacked some thing(s). Lumiere and Cogsworth were then added to help fill out the storytelling. The result is the not so subtle analogous situation of the harried artist working under deadline with an expectant audience.

While I’m satisfied with the composition, I’ll admit that the character size comparisons aren’t quite accurate.

Making Christmas

fig. 1, page 101

fig. 2, page 107

fig. 3, page 106

Around about September of last year, I started thinking about designing a Christmas card (or as I sometimes do, a set of Christmas cards) (fig. 1). The thumbnail sketches and notes generally involve coming up with an all inclusive holiday covering everything from October to New Year’s Day. 

“There’s a monster in my stocking!” detail of page 101.

Other ideas make use of corporate mascot, Monster, and making the letters of the name spell something holiday-ish.

Then I moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Glendale, California, so production on pretty much everything, this blog included, stopped. Skip to November and my ideas were to balance the special with the economical/ practical (fig. 2). At the top left, the accordion layout of six pages was a natural stage to feature six TAGS character in six holiday (now just Christmas and not a multi-holiday mash-up) situations.

Greetings flake, detail of page 107.

Then left brain noted that typical snowflakes have six arms! Perhaps the six pages could detach and then be reformed into the shape of a snowflake.

Yeah, not this year.

Then my farewell card came to mind, the layout with the 12 last thoughts, “b. smart, etc.” With the right image, I could fill out the card with a number of holiday themed “b. blah blah blah”s. Perfect done.

“Stack the Halls”, detail of page 106.

I typically draw on the right facing pages of my sketch books. If I want to continue a particular thought or further design explorations I might continue to the left on the facing even page. Here, I jumped from page 107 to 106. Most obvious are the twelve hand-written statements - which were then re-kerned and cleaned up digitally for use. At the top are mechanical notes figuring out how the letter sheets would be divided and the card folded. The sole character sketch features Monster admiring his pyramid of packing boxes topped with a gift wrap bow a-la tree-top star. This then lead to the final drawing I used for the card. 

I would then go on to digitally edit the art to re-use the stacked boxes alone.

Thanks for visiting monotonae.

b. happy in 2014.