February 4, 2009

Fast Sketch

Rough concept sketch here. This is to be an MP3 player for a client - the artwork is loosely based on the artwork for one of her CDs. The headlights have the forward and back button and the front fender is the volume slide.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:19 AM | Comments (1) | Sketches | Stumble

January 1, 2009

More Seuss-ian Sketching

This one is for my cousin ... it's a long story, but I am now required by law to tease him about moose. So, in a search for Seuss images, I found Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose ... and to be honest, this fits Cuz #1 just perfectly for a multitude of reasons. After I was 3/4 done with the penciling on this particular piece, I decided that the style of shading Seuss used was not going to translate as well as I wanted in ink, so I left it pencils. I used my trusty Ohto Promecha .3 pencil from Jetpens.com because I love the precision of a mechanical pencil when I first start a sketch. The strokes can get wide later after I've got the piece sketched out better. I also used a General's Layout extra black pencil in some of the darker areas and a Kimberly 3B for the lighter shading.

The bits of colour were added to better match the original 1948 cover. I used my Faber Castell Art Grip Aquarelle pencils. Yes, they're watercolour pencils and no I didn't use any of the watercolour features in this drawing - I just like the way the colour lays down with these.

I've really been enjoying these Seuss-ian sketches and as usual, I'm learning a great deal from mimicking a master.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:32 PM | Comments (3) | Sketches | Stumble

December 27, 2008

Ice & Creativity

So, I had hoped to work through lunch Friday and then take off for Ohio to see my aunt. At 6 a.m., I peeked out the window because there were some flashing lights. A city pickup was behind a city bus in front of our driveway. Spreading bags of salt. Bags and bags of salt.

The bus was diagonal in the street.

We had been turned overnight into a beautiful city of solid, polished-glass looking ice.

I went ahead and started my morning getting ready rituals and then proceeded to wait for a while in hopes that the roads would clear up soon. Not too long after that I heard the splishing of a couple of cars driving up the street. Great, I thought, I'll head out to work now.

I took one step out the door.

Next thing I knew I was sitting on our tiny little porch's steps, my beautiful art pop-up book popped up on the sidewalk and The Mascot laying next to it. If I recall correctly, the leg I broke in June was under me, with the ankle in point position.

Naturally, when I realized I was sitting down on the porch I said aloud, "No, not again." The difference was that I didn't black out this time. I'm not sure how I wound up in that particular position, mind, but I wasn't passing out from pain either. Maybe it was better this time. I looked at the porch more carefully and that was when I saw that everything outside - absolutely EVERYTHING - was polished glass ice. No wonder I couldn't even take one step. I scooted backwards into the house and called in. At the very least the ankle was sprained and there was no way to leave the house on crutches - later in the day the county was declared a road emergency - everyone STAY HOME. Besides, I needed to ice the ankle and take some pain pills and anti-inflammatories in hopes that it would get better fast. After I did that, I went back to the doorway with one of the damn grabber claw things I'd needed when I first broke my leg and was immobile. I hung out the doorway, hanging onto the doorway to keep from sliding down the steps and tried to rescue my books which were being sleeted on. Eventually I was able to grab them both.

The ankle is stretched out and kinda sprained, but all in all it's okay I think. I've been using the crutches around the house and it feels much better today.

Since plans changed and I couldn't go visit my aunt ... and had a very limited mobility yet again ... I decided to work on a sketch for my aunt. When I was small, she gave me a book for Christmas every year and I loved it. Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox one year ... but the first one I remember ... dated 1973, so I was five ... was Horton Hears a Who. So, I decided to draw the frontispiece from the copy of Horton that she'd given me way back then.

Hopefully the roads and weather will cooperate and I'll deliver it next weekend. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:13 PM | Comments (3) | Sketches | Stumble

December 6, 2008

Character Sketch

A character sketch for an idea that's been building for a while ...

Odd little critter - not positive about the character's name or the plotlines yet.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:33 PM | Comments (7) | Sketches | Stumble

December 5, 2008

Staying Inside the Lines (or not)

So, if you've been around here very long, you know well that I very much enjoy cartoons and comics.

I don't recall what I was looking for at Amazon one day, but I discovered this:

Hi-Fi Color for comics by Miller and Miller.

The book is simply put - amazing. Included is a CD of Photoshop scripts and a myriad of different comic art for you to follow along with in the book - or colour your own way. The book makes it very clear that Terry Moore and others donated their comic art to the book and that you do NOT have permission to post your colourings online anywhere (except for the very nice HueDoo forum), so unlike some of my other experiments in art, you won't see me posting anything from the book here or at Oppositional Design.

Wait,

before you run off! The stuff in this book is excellent - so much so that you do not have to be some Photoshop wizard or even consider yourself an artist to enjoy this book. If you don't have Photoshop, a good portion of the stuff in the book can be done with Photoshop Elements (comes with many digital cameras) or even the open source GIMP. Yes, the scripts and brushes are specific to Photoshop itself, but you can benefit from the book without those extras - particularly since Amazon's selling the book for a bit over $16 instead of $25. The first script, which "processes" art for you, is something you can recreate with the instructions in the book. The second script is an fx script which looks like is pretty Photoshop specific and perhaps not explained in the book. (But I bet someone on the HueDoo forum has probably explained it by now.) I haven't gotten to what the third script is yet.

Even if you simply enjoy art or comics, you'll get a deeper appreciation as you read through the book and look at the art on the CD. The instructions are clear and step by step - and leave plenty of room for your own creativity. It's the nicest blend of "how-to" which still leaves you to your own creativity I've seen in a long while.

I talk to people all the time who insist they can't draw or they are not artistic and it infuriates me, largely because I was one of those people just three years ago. I drew a lot as a kid - I wanted to go into cartooning way back then, but the only books that I could lay my hands on were simplistic cartooning for kids things that really weren't too helpful. I did enjoy my Mercer Mayer's Little Monster activity book which showed you how to draw all the major characters in the book ... but because I couldn't get the hang of grid drawing (which was supposed to simplify things) ... I got frustrated and quit trying.

As far as I was concerned, my mom was the artist and my sister was the musician ... and I guessed I was a writer. It wasn't until I was fairly deep into web design before I started also trying to draw again. A lot of it was crap ... but then I discovered the Cartoon Cool by Chris Hart and started noodling around again. And, the words that I used to tell my students in first-year writing came back to haunt me: professional writers DO have to work at writing. They don't get it magically right the first time and come downstairs with some finished masterpiece.

Oh.

Yeah.

Umm, gee, I guess the same thing goes for artists, huh? That would be why there are pages of sketches done before an artist tackles a big painting. That's why a comic book artist might do pages and pages of sketches blocking the story out before drawing a comic "for real."

It's simply work that an artist or a writer either enjoys doing or feels compelled to do.

It also helped that I worked with a very talented artist who said he often gets frustrated because what comes out on paper (or canvas or whatever) often doesn't look like what he had in his head.

Oh. So it's not just me, then?

Huh. Who knew?

The trick, really, is turning off that internal editor, that internal critic - or at least muting that voice as much as possible - and enjoying the process of making something turn out better than you thought you could do. In my opinion, both Cartoon Cool and Hi-Fi Color for comics are books which encourage our inner artists, however talented we might be.

You, personally, may not have the patience to draw exactly what you see on the page or in your head ... you might not be great at seeing the geometry of every day objects and converting them into a drawing. That's okay. But a little creativity is good for you. Keeps the brain limber and trying to see things in new ways.

If you're at all interested in drawing or art, I really recommend you give at least one of these books a try - just for a little relaxing fun. You might just surprise yourself. I know I have.

.

(And no, this is not a paid ad for this book. I've never met nor spoken with the Millers. I'm not signed up at Amazon to do referrals. I get nothing monetary or in kind from this post. I simply want to spread the word about something I enjoy and I think more people ought to try.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:23 AM | Comments (1) | Design | Sketches | Stumble

October 22, 2008

Los Interwebz, dos

So, whilst wasting time on Twitter one day, someone said, "I wish I could draw comic strips" ... and thus GeekMom's swell concept became the next Los Interwebz strip. (The first was the troll strip.)

This one is called "Twitterverse." Click the preview to bigify. (It's 1000 px wide ....)

(P.S. Happy birthday, sis!!)

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:19 AM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble