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| Cardboard bikes, sketching, and...Thoroki? | Oct 17, 2012 10:00 AM PDT | url |
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Added 1 new A* page:Here is an interesting article about a super-strong, potentially super-cheap cardboard bike created by an Israeli inventor. Looks a little uncomfortable, maybe, but hey whaddaya want in a disposable bike? :P
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Detail from the pencils for today's A* page:
It interesting (to me :P) to compare this with yesterday's page, since I used fairly similar approaches with regard to the black and white treatment of Selenis and of the background; but although the drawing for today's page is more intricate and precise, I think yesterday's was more successful, because I figured out the distribution of white and black areas pretty well before starting in with ink—unusually well for me, in fact. Today's was more like usual, where I haven't quite figured out exactly which parts will be black and which will be white, and kind of feel it out as I go; this tends to end up with areas shaded in multiple stroke directions and types, which is a bit messy looking, more white ink corrections, which is time consuming, fewer smooth white/black outline transitions, and a less cohesive, less organic feel to the piece overall. So I should probably try to figure out the black and white mapping more clearly before starting the pages, eh, self? Yes.
Although admittedly, even with yesterday's page, I hadn't decided quite how much black to use for Selenis' suit until I got into doing it. So it's also nice to have a little luck where your first try happens to work out!
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Speaking of figuring out what you're going to do before you start, I wanted to do a nice big black and white ink piece of some kind over the weekend, and I sat myself down and tried sketching something out...and tried and tried and came up with nothing that worked. First time that's happened, I think! And I think maybe the problem was again an issue of not having figured out what I'd be drawing—in this case not even having a subject in mind! So I found my pencil just trying to draw more or less random faces and figures, not having in mind anything in particular, but wanting this unspecified subject to be somehow dramatic, and in a neat, detailed way...and apparently that just doesn't work. I had to admit defeat.
In retrospect, I probably should have just drawn one of the two characters in our current A* scene—that probably would have given me enough to build from. But I was also kind of tired I guess and that didn't occur to me until later. But I didn't want to go to bed not having managed to draw anything on an evening where I'd planned to get something drawn, so eventually I grabbed a big marker and just did a doodle—which is the art form probably best suited to drawing when you don't have anything particularly in mind! Here's what came out:
Now...as near as I can figure, that's sort of a hybrid of Marvel Comics' versions of Thor and Loki? Thoroki? I dunno. I think the only thing that had gone through my head when the marker started making marks was this video I watched months ago of Walt Simonson sketching a Thor head with a big marker in his usual lively linear style, and specifically of how he just whipped out those big helmet wing things.
Oh say that's the same marker I was using, now that I look at it again—a Faber-Castell PITT "artist pen big brush." I bought a ton of these things back in that marker phase I had last episode, when I got to thinking I'd be doing the whole comic in markers. So right now I just have boxes of them taking up a good chunk of a shelf in my art supply cupboard of shame. Might as well doodle more with them, I guess! They're definitely quicker and easier to play with than a brush, at any rate, even if they can't make the same variety of marks and their ink can't get as dark.
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