It’s one of those days that I don’t have much to write about.
Blending the background creates motion blur.
If we had hover cars, would we be able to park on a hill? Just curious.
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Deal
So, this drawing is an experiment. I had to stick with a specific thought when drawing a piece of this drawing. For example, the animal sniffing the man’s foot. It started off as a small dog through the body, but then I decided it may be a cat (notice the head). The man to the left started out as a jazz trumpeter (notice the stance). The other guy in the middle is a bunch of ideas mashed together. I have no idea what the machine is. Could be anything from a computer to a butt-o-cizer. After the initial sketch, I decided to go over the established lines and not alter them at all. This part was particularly difficult and took will power.
There is no erasing at all in this sketch, just aggressive blending. I used the stock paper that I hardly use anymore. It is quite unforgiving and allows one or two passes with an eraser before it starts to show wear and tear. I like it for the rougher texture and the pulp fiction novel look I get from it.
Swamp Map
This is what I’ve been working on all day. Sometimes, I get my creative fix with someone else’s idea. This is the map to the swamp project I’ve been working on. I know Tim Hynes would think it looks cool. He’s an incredible illustrator. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have taken Flash as far as I have regarding graphics if Tim didn’t show us what exactly was possible. Now, that was a neat experience, to see raw talent push a tool to do things it wasn’t intended to do. His vision just had to come out and he wasn’t going to stop until it did.
And it did.
It is really difficult to put a value on something like that. What makes Tim any different than any other pioneer in their field? Most other professions have what they call ROI Which is Return on Investment. If you build a better widget than the competition, that makes you money. Better still, you can figure out how much it’s going to cost to develop the better widget and how much more you’ll earn over time as a result of the initial investment. If you take vector shapes and create a brilliant piece of art and it takes eight hours, it’s not worth the effort. Especially if you can buy a stock photo of the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
So much for the practical application…
Bummer, Kevin. We need more unicorn poop, Dude.
WENCESLAVS
This is from a story that Senior~ Wenceslaus tells about a story that his grandfather told about his grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. The story is not so much about WENCESLAVS, as it is about his worthy opponent, Kvle (pronounced “Kyle”).
You see, Kvle kind of stumbled into this profession. He started doing it to put himself through Horticulture school. After he graduated he found the money was far better when he could pick up some day shifts, so he decided to do it full time, but only to save up some money, then he will by a suit, get a haircut (literally), and get a real job. This is exactly what he told himself.
At the moment captured in this sketch, Kvle is sad.
Ten years after that fateful decision, he finds himself doing exactly the same thing he was doing then. Apart from the lovely herb garden Kvle keeps in his back yard, he is no closer to his goal of being a top dirt doctor then he was before he graduated. To make matters worse, his popularity is growing within the gladiatorial circles. Normally, this would be wonderful news, however, his adoring fans have given him the moniker “Baboon Boy”, when Kvle clearly resembles an orangutan.
This is obvious to Kvle. What frustrates him the most is the fact that he would have to head the crusade to educate the public regarding the differences between the baboon and the orangutan and he knows he just doesn’t have the inclination nor the patience for that.
But, it really doesn’t matter, because after his chance encounter with this Wenceslaus, he will never step foot in an arena again…
Hehe. Now, I’m just starting to make stuff up…
That’s my friend, Arta, in the stands. She’s a dancer. I gave her junior high school eyebrows.
I am really playing with atmospheric perspective through blurring. I kept WENC in sort of a shadowed state to really draw him closer to the viewer, therefore pushing everything else out in the light/background. Imagine the stands filled all the way to the top of the drawing with people. That’s what I’d do if I were to paint this.
American Beauty
I did this sketch a while ago for Century Granite. I would sketch a drawing of a person, place or thing and through an etching process, they would transfer it on a grave marker (notice, I didn’t say tombstone nor grave stone?). This was one of my favorite sketches. From what can I remember, the photo was taken just before WWII. I imagine some GI carried this photo half way across the world in his helmet.
I know I would.
I really enjoy the high contrast look every once in a while. It’s a simplified version of reality that’s pleasant to look at and easy to comprehend. What I like most about this sketch is how simple it is, and yet her essence isn’t lost at all.
Happy Cow
I did this Cow Animation a while ago with a good friend of mine. I am amazed at how fast time flies. I read somewhere that the older you get, the cooler you run (in other words, your core temperature cools as you get older). This may slow your reaction time, thus making it appear time is moving faster. My son told me he is convinced he was eight years old for way longer than a year. I feel like I blinked and he was nine.
I had a dream the other night that my oldest was four again and we were watching TV. In the dream, I put my hand between his shoulder blades like I used to and I could feel his tiny little spine on the tips of my fingers.
What a gift that was.
Desert Scene
This sketch was for a background for an animation I did about twelve years ago. I colored it in photoshop, however I cant find that file. I wanted it to be very simple, so it would be glaringly obvious it wasn’t to be taken so seriously.
Looking at it now and thinking how much my style has changed, I wonder what it would look like if I drew it knowing what I know now.
It’s funny how we never stop learning or evolving. Things that were so important to me five years ago don’t matter at all now.
Kitchen Sink
I love creating different textures in my sketches. This one is no exception and there’s a lot of them, hence, the title. It is for a landing page for kmrucker.com.
I am blending my sketches a lot more lately. I love the tones it gives me. It makes it really easy to pull highlights and push shadows around. This may be the next evolution of this technique.
Before the Take
Well, it has finally happened. I missed a day for the Sketch of the Day. It gives me that same feeling I got when I scratched my truck for the first time. Now the pressure is off. I don’t have to worry about scratching my truck any more.
My computer was infected by the W32/Blaster.worm. Basically, some doosh invented this virus to act like an Anti-virus software program on your computer and exclaim, “You have a virus, quick, pay us fifty dollars and we’ll make it go away!”. I have to admire the thought behind it.
I really blended the heck out of this sketch. I wanted to give it a darker, more smoky look. I didn’t use a dog for a reference. Instead, I drew it from memory. It’s my buddies current dog, combined with the shitzu he had growing up. The dog I had, growing up, was not as cute, nor was it an inside dog, so this was what I came up with it.
Tracking a Unicorn
I have been taking personal inventory on a micro level as of late. I am going through my house, drawer by drawer, closet by closet, figuring out what to keep and what to throw away. I am hardly a hoarder. My house contains everything I need and very little of what I can live without. This is an attempt to get the very little even littler. LOL, how often do you get to use “littler” in a sentence? Funny, because I chuckle when I use “do do” in conversation every time also. Which brings us right back to the drawing…
If I had more time, I would have really played with atmospheric perspective here. Next drawing or so, I want to really play with blurring objects to make them look farther away, or too close to focus in on. I have officially decided to adopt the technique I have developed over the past few months. Or, maybe it’s adopted me, I’m not sure yet. The next logical step is to attempt something like this. Pretty mindblowing, huh?