You’re only as good as your reference

Posted on June 20, 2011 by doodlehoose

Aayla Secura

During one of my classes at the Art Institute of Philadelphia the professor said, “You’re only as good as your reference.” Trusting student that I was, I immediately began challenging the statement in my mind. I had seen many fellow students, and professors produce beautiful artwork without seeming to look at anything except what they were making. I thought, “where’s their reference?” Then it occurred to me that it was in their head. They had spent a long time looking closely at the world and had built up a visual library in their brains (sort of a wetware version of Google images). Since then I have learned over and over again that my best work requires a little research.

Ventress vs Aayla

Ventress vs Aayla thumbnail duel (click on the image to start the animation)

This week’s drawing was inspired by the 3D animated Clone Wars movie (tolerable, but too long and often clumsy (they could probably say the same thing about this sentence)). Watching the movie made me want to draw some lady jedi in a lightsaber duel, and even though they weren’t in the movie I went with Asajj Ventress and Aayla Secura because of their interesting design. I did quite a few thumbnail sketches of the battle, but ended up selecting a single pose for today (not enough time to fully animate (not enough skill either (yet))). I started the drawing above without reference, but then after getting the beginning outline I knew I needed to prompt my memory. That’s when I found out what the character’s name was and that I had already messed up her outfit (fixed what I could and then figured she has more than one outfit).

Practice Hands

These are some sketches I did of my hand to warm up to do Aayla’s (mine aren’t blue or slender, but it still helped). I hope you enjoyed this week’s doodle.

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A post by any other name

Posted on June 13, 2011 by doodlehoose

The Interview

Today’s post is brought to you by Cracked Magazine, but not really. One of my friends is both an avid fan of Cracked and the wiki world community (he likes to write encyclopedias). He commissioned me to create a drawing of his favorite Cracked Magazine reporter Nanny Dickering (if you don’t know who she is you don’t need to be ashamed (I didn’t either) and check out the entry that he wrote for her (http://cracked.wikia.com/wiki/Nanny_Dickering). I did a couple of sketches of the lady and then decided to toss Phil in for good measure. You can check out his site for Shakespeare at (http://www.edwoodonline.com/ShakeCo/MAIN.html).

Round 1

This first one was a quick pen and marker sketch of my ideal of an intrepid woman out to get the story and look good doing it.

Round 3

This is actually my third sketch (I threw out the second), and I decided to take the liberty of making Nanny a red head. I think this one is my favorite.

The final drawing was done with pen and colored pencils, and some digital painting. I still haven’t gotten into a rhythm on the scanner, but I’ll get there. I’m watching Hudsucker Proxy even now, and I can recommend it for an excellent movie with a strong female reporter.

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Mjolnir- for those hard to reach places

Posted on June 6, 2011 by doodlehoose

This is my version of our favorite Norse God after a conquest.

Some times you just have to go back to go forward. Thor has been in the news a lot recently and though I dabbled with the Marvel title during my teen years, it was really the original mythology that captured my imagination. I mean who doesn’t want to practically invulnerable and control thunder?

This one is my first and favorite except for the hand holding the hammer (that's the beginning of the Midgard serpent in the background). I love the pose, but I went back to the drawing board and got some photo reference for hand as well as another ideal for the background.

My goal with this drawing was to capture my own take on Thor and continue a technique I’ve been developing with washable markers. I did a few little doodles and then tried to imagine a pose I hadn’t seen before. There are lots of Thor in the clouds, lighting flashing, action smashing poses, but how many at rest? I wanted to show the weight of Mjolnir and an act that was tiring, but is done. The moment after battle.

This is my second attempt, and I got out photo reference for the hands, pose and background (yes I am the model). I felt the hands and scene were better, but the figure was way too stiff and had Chewbacca arms.

The technique that I have been developing starts with a pen drawing. I then color with washable markers (over color actually) and run it under water. I started developing the process by mistake by spilling on a rendering. Then I saw a page underneath had a print and I thought I might have a new way of doing a monoprint. When I was trying to perfect that I realized that the washed out original ends up looking pretty cool too (especially if you rework some of the pen lines after).

With the final I did Thor on a separate page from the background so that I could bleed the colors without bleeding too much of the blue. I’m still not satisfied with what I want to use the technique for (it’s like a more complicated version of water color), but I think it’s fun to have some things in an image that you didn’t predict. Also it challenged me to risk my drawing and push myself.

To end this week here is an image of the cover of a book about Thor that is wonderfully illustrated by Jim Madsen (check out this website http://www.shannonassociates.com/artists/index.cfm?page_num=13&artist_name=jimmadsen). His art is inspiring and makes me want to get better.

A very fun book about Thor

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More than you can chew…

Posted on May 30, 2011 by doodlehoose
Community Group

The cast of Community from "Introduction to Statistics"

This week’s post is a visual of the age old saying, “don’t bite off more than you can chew.” I wanted to do a drawing of the cast from the show Community in their first season Halloween costumes. My plan was to draw them all individually and then scan, color and join them in photoshop. As you can see only part of that happened.

The difficulties arose when I started to draw the cast members and couldn’t get any resemblance. So I tried again and then came the challenge of the blend of real and cartoon. I didn’t want this to be serious studies of portraiture I wanted it to be fun. After drawing the characters many times until I got something satisfactory for each I put them together and then ran out of time to color them. It turns out that doing the drawings separately meant a lot more scanning and color correction than I expected and a much larger file size (so everything goes slower).

In the end I still want to color them, but I think some of the characters came out fun to look at and I did make the deadline of getting something posted on Monday, just a bit late.

I also thought you might like a look at one of the sketches that I did get colored. It’s looser than the drawings above, but I think it captures the spirit.

Abedman

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Super Punk

Posted on May 23, 2011 by doodlehoose
Steam Lex gets his

Super Punk

Today’s post is my variation on Superman via Steam Punk. So imagine that Krypton sent it’s last son to Metropolis during the Victorian Age. My guess is that the presence of aliens would have changed our path a bit. Here we see a version of Lex that has joined with Brainiac to make the best of the technology of the age. The aviator scarf is my nod to a cape without breaking the rules I learned from The Incredibles- No Capes!

I started this one with a pencil drawing and then colored it in Photoshop. Thanks to my brother I used a wacom tablet to do the shading on the background. I really enjoyed that, but ditched it for the main characters because I wanted to go faster and I’m used to the mouse. I will have to restrict my tools soon so that I force myself to use new ones, but I liked what I got out of this illustration and I think the scratchy pencils match the  scene.

Now I’m going to go try to imagine the Superman theme on a pipe organ.

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Tools of the trade

Posted on May 16, 2011 by doodlehoose

Mixed Media

Marker week continues into marker two weeks (if only it were that simple to expand shark week) with this still life from my desk. The nice thing about markers, and colored pencils is that I can grab them and take them off to a quiet spot during lunch and draw without needing to have a computer.

The nice thing about a still life is that you can show something of your subject without showing them. This piece gives a small window into my day and the different tools that I use to get through it.

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Render unto Markers

Posted on May 9, 2011 by doodlehoose
A stith life

Darth Monday

Last week I started playing with my markers and highlighters again. It has been fun and Friday I started a practice of doing a drawing in the morning before work. All the renderings this week were drawn first with a pen, then colored with markers and finally I used colored pencils to finish them off. I’ve been using pen to force myself away from the perfectionist habit of worrying too much about mistakes. With a pen you get used to the fact that mistakes will have to be dealt with instead of erased (like in life). Another sort of parable with this kind of drawing is that it can look pretty rough before it’s finished, but you have to keep in mind that what you do in the first stage will look very different at the end (like in life). That’s as profound as I get today, so on to the drawings.

I chose the Darth Tater for the still life above because Monday’s have a bit of the Sith Lord in them (probably the Emperor’s favorite day (or did he hate Monday’s too, “Oh back to the grind of evil making. I wish I were at my cottage kicking back, knitting evil mittens and watching the sun go supernova”)). The coffee is the hero of the drawing of course.

Boba Fett is obviously from last Friday because bounty hunters love Friday’s.

TGIBFF

Thank God it's Boba Fett Friday

This last one is a copy of a drawing by J. Korim for the cover of a graphic novel called Neozoic. The graphic novel was all right writing wise, but it’s well worth picking up just for Korim’s art! My rendering follows the form of learning by copying from the masters. I could not get this drawing right when I was using pencil and I finally got it when I loosened up and started with a yellow marker. I give full credit to J. Korim for the awesome concept and I am thankful that we can learn from the work of others.

Sitting at the feet of Master Korim

My Renderition of Neozoic

The real Masters

The real Deal

I did quite a few more marker renderings this week, but I think I’ll toss them in a gallery some time soon.

Thanks for reading and now I feel the sunshine calling…

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A Cephalopod by any other name

Posted on May 2, 2011 by doodlehoose
Steampunk Octopus

Cephalobot

Today’s artwork is not what I had planned to show you originally (you may see that later), but it suits this blog well because it started out as a doodle. I was trying to draw a more realistic octopus that didn’t look exactly like my reference. My drawings were all right, but not anywhere near what I had planned out in my head. So I decided to draw something that had nothing to do with my plan.

The first thing that came to mind was how an octopus has eyes that resemble gauges, and the rest is what you see above. I do not claim to be an expert on steam punk, but I have read William Gibson’s The Difference Engine and I’ve seen Steamboy and The Amazing Screw On Head (does that one even count?), and I love the show Firefly so I was familiar with the concept. This piece is a celebration of the knobs, gears and gadgets of a time that never was.

It’s also a celebration of going into a creation without quite knowing where it will end. It was a lot of fun to explore the textures and colors and at the end I have a piece that definitely departs from the reference to show my voice. So I encourage you to embrace stepping into the unknown and trying something unplanned.

For bonus images I’m going to attach the drawing minus the digital parts and a drawing I did today that is a little more like the octopus we all know and love.

Cephalobot sans Digital

Cephalobot sans Digital

Your Standard Orange Octopus

Your Standard Orange Octopus

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Go, Ready, Set

Posted on April 25, 2011 by doodlehoose
DougGiraffe

My second posted piece of fan art

Doug TenNaple

The photo that inspired the fan art

Today’s post is about an artist that has been very inspirational to me- Doug TenNapel. Several years ago I found a book called Creature Tech at the Library. The cover caught my eye and the low risk of the library put it in my basket without a second thought. When I got home and started reading the book it was a quirky tale about science, magic, religion and a man coming to know Christ through a very unorthodox method (space eels, British Ghosts, alien symbiotes…). Before I finished the book I had hopped onto amazon.com and ordered a copy for myself. Since then I’ve added almost all of Doug’s work to my collection and I haven’t regretted it.

Creature Tech

Where my fandom started

I’ve been hugely inspired by Doug because he is able to write exciting stories that share his faith without being manipulative. His characters are complex and his stories are outrageous, but always grounded in truth. He doesn’t beat up non-Christians for disagree, but he also takes a stand.  The evidence of his skill is that his work sits on the shelves with all of the other graphic novels out there, and not in the “Christian Literature” section. That’s a lot to do and admire.

This year Doug jumped into a new medium and is publishing an webcomic called Ratfist (check it out at http://ratfist.com/)  five days a week. The story is about a superhero named Ricky who wears a rat costume to fight crime with his buddy Milt and is facing a kind of mid-life crisis that gets much worse when he stumbles on a magic rat that merges with him and gives him a tail that shouts out his subconscious thoughts for everyone to hear (imagine your inmost thoughts being inconveniently public). The story is fun and has lots of twists and turns, but the other element that has really moved me is the comments/blog section below the comic.

Doug has used his comic to address issues ranging from medical ethics to video game production and all of it without belittling his audience. He has shown genuine concern for what his fans think and has given them an outlet to share their voice even when he disagrees. He has been an example of how a Christian can engage a post modern world without bullying or backing down.

Me as Ratfist- my first piece of fan art to be posted

On a very personal note Doug has inspired me to get this comic go whether I was ready or not (hence the title of this post), and he gave me a forum to show my artwork (check them out at http://ratfist.com/nggallery/page-247/page-2/).

This post is a thanks to Doug and an encouragement to anyone out there that is looking for inspiration or motivation. I’m going to close it with a Doug quote from his comments page.

Doug TenNapel

February 15, 2011 at 10:32 am | # | Reply

Don’t let the someday thing kill your work. It’s better to dive in and look stupid, unprepared, and not have the greatest idea than to never end up doing anything. I’m flying by the seat of my pants on Ratfist, didn’t have the character perfectly drawn, much less the supporting characters. In the case of webcomics you aren’t beholden to a publisher. It’s almost always better to make something than not… unless you’re the band RUSH, then it’s better to not make anything at all.

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And now for something completely different

Posted on April 18, 2011 by doodlehoose
Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies

Today’s blog is different in two significant ways- 1. The artwork was not created digitally and 2. It’s not about something fun.

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am a Christian and that part of me plays a major role in this piece of artwork. Beelzebub is a Hebrew name that translates “Lord of the Flies”, and it can be synonymous with Satan although it doesn’t have to be.

When you think about how flies behave the title “Lord of the Flies” seems quite apropos of a devil. I mean buzzing around and annoying people, eating and living on crap, occasionally biting and whenever possible carrying deadly disease. Add to that an annoying ability to get into almost anywhere and you have a pretty devilish insect (not to be anthropomorphizing anyone).

If you’re not a Christian then we disagree, but I’m sure that you can relate to the ideal of someone that absolutely annoys you and seems to be trying to trip you up in everything you do. I am not the sort of Christian that thinks there is a demon behind every bush or that any human needs a devil to help them get up to devilish things, but I do believe that, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Before I give you the context of the creation of this piece I want to give you a little of the artist’s statement. The man represented is not the Lord of the Flies. He is loosely based on me (because I’m a cheap model) and is meant to have some realistic detail without being a specific person- he’s anyone. The screen in the background represents his personal internal defenses and is warped and damaged from use.

During the day, I work in an in school suspension room and last week was the week before our spring break. Well let me tell you that last Thursday was a hard one! I had to deal with angry students and angry parents and at the end of the day when I get to do art in an after school program none of the students showed up and I cut myself on broken glass. When I got home, my wife had had a horrible day and we went to dinner to relax and my son spilled everything he could reach and when we got to the gym he cried the whole time my wife got to swim. I know those were two run on sentences, but that was a very run on day. I don’t blame Beelzebub for any of it, but boy was it annoying.

This image came from that day. After the hardest part of the school day, when a troubled student was removed, I had a moment to breathe, and I saw a simple anonymous drawing. I don’t know who made it, but it immediately caught my eye as having some of the same feelings that I had at that moment and I set out to do my interpretation. It felt good to draw, but to get to the final image was arduous. This piece could be a visual representation of my goal “to fail until I succeed.”

Evolution of Lord of the Flies

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