I definitely went over my self-imposed 1 week timeframe. This drawing took me 2 weeks, mainly due to constant interruptions and exhaustion. My son is dropping a nap and juggling him and my daughter’s schedule has left me wiped out. Another reason why this took so long, versus the previous one that I think had more going on, is because there were a lot of measurements that went into the perspective for this one whereas the previous one had a lot of fluid lines. I find those to be much much faster.
You can see I’ve added some colour to this. I intend to do this a lot more with each following drawing. Trying to get these to professional grade is difficult but I think I’m going in the right direction. This particular story won’t be done for a while. Hopefully by the time I’m done it will look like something halfway decent.
“Remember to wait for a breeze so it feels natural.” the good Dr. Sun said to his ever-enthusiastic research assistant, June. Meanwhile, somewhere over the Atlantic, Sir Isaac Newton was rolling in his grave…mostly from laugher.
This is a drawing using India ink and a cheap little nib I happened to find by accident. It’s definitely worth the extra work. The lines seem sharper, and when I erased some of the pencil it didn’t smudge. Ink and nib it is!!! I’m too chicken to try marker on the original so I’ll be using some copies to add colours either with marker or by stealing my kids’ crayons. Dialogue bubble be damned (for now).
I think I might be getting faster but no way to know without timing myself. In any case, I’ll be taking this week off to work on a coloured version of the above, to finish up a story that’s due, to do a character sketch for Dr. Sun…and to figure out how to make a snail’s shell scab.
And THIS is a jpeg printout of the same drawing, coloured in using Prismacolor pencil crayons.
First, I’ll do a straight photocopy of the original next time. Doing it this way creates an annoying grey/blue tint to it. Second, that odd texture throughout comes from the paper I had underneath the copy. Again, lesson learned.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it has come to my attention I can’t colour worth a damn. I think I either didn’t try hard enough to make this work, I picked the wrong medium or…which I’m strongly leaning towards…I have a yet undiagnosed colouring disability. I like black and white so much that I always think a coloured version won’t be as good. Unfortunately for me the project I’m working on on the side needs colours, and to be happy/melancholy at that. The lovely person at Deserres, an art store near me (this isn’t a plug, it just happens to be on my kids’ stroller nap path) suggested watercolour pencils. Didn’t even know they existed. I will now try to get my hands on a few of those and try this drawing again, on a photocopy. I refuse to use the original as a guinea pig.
For the next one I’ll be using blue pencil, India ink and the nib from the original above, but hoping to fill up the whole page with background instead of concentrating on just the main objects.
So I decided to go for it and colour the blackness of space in…and holy cow is it ever a pain in the ass. This picture has been altered to hell and back. Even with the tweaks you can still see the marker lines, and just to make it interesting there is a splotch of grease in the corner (’cause I did the touch up after lunch while trying to keep my kids off the damn desk).
Lessons learned: I will need to set up my stuff high above the desk so I’m not always running away with this thing into grease areas. And I’ll need to ask someone how to fill in large amounts of black without getting so many streaks. It could be the new markers or the quality of paper. Either way, it looks horrible in person. Please enjoy this modified version.
This is not a layout. I switched over to this when I saw a doodle my daughter made, which is below. Haven’t drawn anything vehicle-like in a very long time. Definitely need more practice and chickened out on glare on black glass.
Another thing is that I learned about the dimensions for the layout I wanted to do (like, industry standard) versus the size of my scanner, so I will need to rethink the story and simplify the heck out of it.
Carla Benvenuto 