Added 1 new A* page:Oh my gosh, Christmas came early for me this year 'cause a ridiculously generous reader got me the second volume in IDW's giant-sized "Definitive Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim" series of Alex Raymond's gorgeous 1930s Sunday comics, which I had just put on A*'s Amazon Wish List. These collections are amazing, and this is great timing since I just finished pouring through the first volume like yesterday. Thank you dear reader!! I'll have photos and stuff about this volume in the blog next week--skimming through it I think I spotted the strip in which Raymond switched to drawing from live models, which makes a really interesting transition in his art.
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I finally got around to posting my backlog of sketches from the past week, when pen testing and my plunging into warm-up sketches suddenly produced a pile of them. Because I try to keep my computer off during the day (darn those internet distractions, you know), I just take them with my cell phone and post them through that to my Instagram, which is kind of a new thing for me. And I use the Instagram app to cross-post them to my Twitter and my Tumblr, in case you want to follow any of those things. I won't pack all of them into this one blog post--just the ones that turned out at least fairly decently. : P Actually I've even tried an experiment and put what I think are the two pretty keen ones up for auction on eBay, starting at just $0.99, with free shipping (I can just pop them in an envelope and send them out in the regular mail : ). Those two, with links to their auctions, are:
"Line Portrait" - This was a practice sketch I did earlier in the week with the thickest Tikky Graphic pen, the 0.8 mm one--and also just testing the quick line response of that and I think maybe a few other "fineliner"-style markers, which often have trouble with ink flow when drawing fast lines--the very "wet" Tikky Graphics are the best I've found at it:
"Beat Cop" - A test sketch with the 0.3 mm Tikky Graphic that I did late last night; I'd been using the 0.8 mm for the past few A* pages, but then kinda realized it was too thick for what I was trying to do. The 0.3 may end up being my main drawing size, with the 0.1 mm for finer/lighter details.
I'm not sure why it ended up being a cop but I like the light and sketchy way it came out; at that point I was frustrated that the previous two A* pages--done mostly with the thicker 0.8 pen--had come out looking slower and heavier than I'd kind of like. I'm still struggling to keep the light and sketchy feel in the more complicated drawings I do over pencils for the A* pages, thus this making myself do warm-up sketches to try to get in the flow. After this sketch turned out much more in the style I'd like I was tempted to try doing the next A* page with pen only, no pencil first, like I did a lot of brush-first pages back around episodes 16/17, but I also remembered that that didn't really work for doing anything beyond very basic layouts and poses. So I guess I'll just have to keep trying to get myself to stay in the sketchy mode and not be so precious while going over pencils, hrmph.
^ A maybe 0.3 Tikky sketch hiding among a page of bad sketches that I did last weekend; I'm not sure why they ended up being an archer : ) but this is really the sketchy style I wish I could pull off consistently.
^ The page of brush pen sketches I did on Sunday after finally getting myself another Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (the plastic bristles on the one I'd gotten a year or so earlier to experiment with had broken down really quickly : P); it's also the page of sketches that convinced me that maybe I *should* try pens again vs brushes, since the particularly mushy feel of the Pocket Brush bristles was just a big disappointment, guess I'd forgotten how they felt. The sable brushes I've been using for A* feel much better, but even they can't do the hard, snappy, sketchy stuff I'd like to play with.
^ From last weekend, just experimenting with the different tip sizes of the Tikky Graphic pens I have: the ones I got (and which have mostly been sitting in my art supply cupboard of shame for the past year or so) are 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 0.8, although they also come in sizes between those; this page has 0.3 on top, 0.1 on the bottom, and 0.5 in the one at the middle left.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if you see a sketch that strikes you, and it isn't one that's currently up for auction, feel free to email me to see if I still have it, 'cause for like $5 I will happily tear it out of my sketchbook and mail it to you.
Oh and I forgot to mention, the sketchbook in question is a decades-old recycled, acid-free 110 lb Robert Bateman Cover Series sketchbook from a cache I bought back in my school days--was pleased/amazed to find they're even still making these things! Although the old ones have much whiter paper than the newer ones, which are leaning toward a light gray. I'm using larger format newer ones for the main A* pages now, since they take pen lines particularly well--I'll have to do a blog post on these sketchbooks some time, I like 'em.
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