patokon blog

I decided to continue to practice crosshatching and I thought I photos by photographer Edward S. Curtis might be excellent thanks to the balance of light and dark and clear gradations in his works. The moment I saw the photo of Big Head (his name, original found here: http://m.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/native-americans-portraits-from-a-century-ago/100489/) I knew that he would be the perfect practice subject. I did a very quick layout with blue-pencil, added a few shading guides, and then jumped right in with a Tachikawa Finepoint System 0.1 and 0.4. I put emphasis on trying out techniques rather than slavish attention to detail. Even though I'm working on developing a more cartoonish style and don't intend to focus on realism, it was definitely an excellent way to practice drawing uniform lines and applying different combinations of patterns. I realize now that in some areas, I should have left the horizontal lines alone without crossing them with verticals. I'm goin...

Watching Dead in Tombstone starring Danny Trejo, I was inspired to focus on this drawing more than the movie. Still, I'm glad Señor Trejo gets to be the star these days. 

Art from my BOOK of THINGS, Quote from Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer "It's not that I'm trying to introduce into the story surrealistic thingsand situations that I became aware of. I'm just trying to portray things that are real to my, myself, a little more realistically." - Haruki Murakami ( 村上春樹 )

Science, dammit!

I've been battling colds and neck/back pain this weekend and thus limited output for the last few days. Also spent much of yesterday registering my webcomic (Hexenringe @ http://hexenringe.blogspot.com) with a bunch of websites to try to get some regular readers.  So this morning I'm jumping back on the horse with this line experiment of Masato Sakai (堺雅人) of 'Mita-San' 'Hanzawa Naoki' and 'Legal High' fame.  This was drawn with a grey brushpen while on the train.  EDIT I decided to add this shaded version to show my improvements.  Better, huh? The ink flow was uneven in this pen so lines would be heavier than I wanted. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

For some reason, our supermarket always had Count Chocula and Franken Berry, but never Boo Berry which was my favorite (because the character in the commercials was so damn smooth!).  I started out planning to draw a sexy chick, but my wife was watching America's Next Top Model and looking at Chris' forehead made me want to do a monster which became a vampire with a serous widow's peak which then made me go COUNT CHOCULA! He needed a companion so I did a Franken Berry and that was that.  Buff and pissed Count Chocula. Add milk and run like hell.  Franken Berry didn't get the good brain either. He's not a fan of fire, but you know what he hates more? Pop-Tarts. 

John Buscema is an amazing artist and really exemplifies "the Marvel look" for people of my generation. His Conan is THE Conan and his Silver Surfer is THE Surfer for me. Reading his interview in the John Buscema Sketchbook that came out a few years ago, I'm convinced that besides being a master of storytelling, he's also a really decent human being. He doesn't hesitate to gush over the artists he truly respects - Frazetta , Al Williamson , Jeffrey Jones ,  comics,art,Inktober,weapon x,sketch,heroine,dailysketchchallenge,drawing,X-23,marvel,wolverine , etc. I found it extremely interesting that he says he outgrew Burne Hogarth (famous Tarzan artist and creator of several books that many comics artists learn from) saying he was "too stiff" and "more involved with muscles than the movement of the figure" and that he prefers Hal Foster and Alex Raymond .  Of Jack Kirby he says "he's number one then, today, and in the future".  He...

My favorite Weapon X, Laura Kinney is my daily sketch today.  Immediately I want to start critiquing. I'm getting better at hair, which doesn't say a whole lot, and my proportions are so much better than before (the big head is on purpose, jeez!). The pose isn't dynamic enough - too stiff, the leather texture needs work and the head should actually be bigger to match the proportions I used yesterday (consistency dammit!). This might be a good candidate for re-drawing in the big notebook. 

I got a new Moleskine sketchbook in a human size after drooling over JR's (see  http://jimssketchblog.blogspot.jp/)  nifty LotR one. Mine is the ltd. ed. Mickey Mouse one, so there! Anyway, after talking to several artist friends, I've decided to use this bigger sketchbook to explore things I've drawn in my smaller one.  This is my first big sketch. It's Deadpool because I recently started reading Deadpool MAX (almost wrote DP MAX, but that would be oh so wrong) and I really liked it. Kyle Baker is so awesome and he's the reason I bought it.  This is the smaller piece I did yesterday that inspired the bigger one.  I won't be doing the big drawings every day, but whenever I want to explore new stuff or try new techniques I'll use the bigger book to do so. The challenge for this particular piece was doing all the scarring. The texture overwhelmed the costume tatters as I was afraid it would, but I'm still not unhappy with the results.  I'd be happy to ...

Sun. night I was sampling too much beer when I drew this pretty #monstober #inktober monster.  Then afterwards, I drew a li'l Deadpool which I'll share in my next post.