Not art, but art related

So I was at my usual coffee haunt last night, doing my doodle thing in my sketchbook. I was at an elevated counter on a stool facing a window to the street and some outside seating generally for smokers more than weather permitting--this is important at the end, take notes, kids. Anyway, I was mostly trying to panel out a 2-page idea and a 3-panel idea (that I can't seem to get lower than 4 panels) I had that sounded like good practice since my visual narrative skills are sub-par (read: not where I want them to be at my age) and I was being painfully scatterbrained and indecisive about it all night.

At the end of the night an older white guy with a shaved head (sure he could have been cue-ball bald...) walked up to the two people next to me, a darker-skinned guy with a short tightly-haired beard in what looked like a faux-military jacket that I forget the country of leaning against the counter, and the girl sitting at the end of the counter, a lean brunette with short hair and a few of those rings that cover the middle segment of the finger--these were particularly noteworthy because whenever she'd plop a hand down I'd hear a clank of her metal against the roofing copper that's used to cover the counters, and the nearly 3 hours I was there added up to a lot of clanking. The two guys had a brief chat, she was half in half out of it, and then the guy who had walked up noticed me doodling and asked to see what I'd just scribbled. I told him I'd just erased that disaster, but here, flip through the whole sketchbook, but be warned the first half is from 2005 (2006 actually, but I remembered wrong) which is why things change drastically mid-way. He liked that I was "boarding" a lot in the most recent pages, continually pleaded with me to stop being self-deprecatory, asked me about my goals and concerns: visual narrative, which I'm "wonky" at, to which he again pleaded with me to stop being self-deprecatory, then told me to learn through emulation (oddly the same thing my art and animation teachers have all told me) and told me to simply keep at it and be positive before walking off.

Despite now feeling bad that I'd used words he deemed too negative and self-defeating to the point he had to insist I stop (his brow even furrowed), having just a short chat like that sort of made my night better as a whole. Then a moment later his friend next to me (dark skinned, faux[?] military jacket) asks if I thought it was weird or odd for a guy to just walk up give me feedback like that, and I said something to the effect of "Nah, any critical feedback after college, let alone good? Do you know how hard that is to come by?", to which he and the girl both grinned at. It was interesting that a guy would walk up, flip through it, notice a few pages ask questions. Quite awesome really. So then he motions out the window and points to the guy who I'd just been talking to who was now sitting just on the other side of the window I'm facing and next to another regular, an older short Asian guy with salt and pepper hair and goatee who's always nose-deep into his large-screened laptop doing something that takes all of his focus at all times, and says "...[T]hose two are ex-Dreamworks and Pixar," though not saying which one was which. I think I was able to keep my shock down to my eyes only half bugging out of my face. The third guy's background is Hollywood, and the lot of them are looking to use their experience to get into working as an animation house for video game cinematics. Which makes sense since almost all games have both miserable dialogue and worse directing for non-interactive sequences. Cheers to them whoever they actually are... well I think the guy in the noteworthy jacket flirting/mingling with the girl next to me said his name, but I had 5 horrible hours of sleep that day, so I barely remember anything but what's written down here.

---

This post was originally about 1/5th this length. But then I got an itch to write it out in length because I can and I don't have an editor--if I did, all my "-ed" and "-ing" would be consistent.

MS Paint contests

"MS Paint what you'd do if you had a Jetpack"


"MS Paint your OWN PERSONAL COUNTRIES [sic] CURRENCY"


Sometimes you don't want to take "art" seriously and doodle in MS Paint. And sometimes you've spent too goddamn much money on a fancy drawing tablet.

Both of these doodles were for web forum quick contests. "You have 1-hour to draw..." and the prizes were Steam games that were on sale for sub-$10. Sometimes you churn out a quick crappy cartoon just because it's fun and because not everything needs to be a masterpiece. Also it's good practice to slam out a quick composition.

AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYBRAH "MOTHERFUCKIN'" LINCOLN

Do you think he'd still get elected?

I had that weird zombie-Lincoln face on my mind when I sat down with my coffee and sketchpad tonight. Took way too long to make this, but it was entertaining to do. The time was overspent guessworking the pose... a photo source would have been handy for speeding it up.

Usual method of red pencil, 2B, black smooth ballpoint, did a little blacking with a calligraphy pen (that's starting to dry out sadly), scanned it, tweaked the levels, filled in the rest of the black, and realized I outta digitally "inkwash" it just a touch with a transparent layer of grey. Sorta wish I'd used Painter's digital watercolor layer instead, but I didn't think of it till I started writing this.

Hobos

Sketch I did at my usual cafe Wednesday last week. As with most doodles where I'm leaning back and getting jittery with a cup of coffee, it shifts between controlled and chaotic, and I screw up foot placement.

Key note to fellow people who like it kick back and doodle carelessly: remember to do depth checks to make sure the right limbs are in the front.

WIP - A Shack

It's actually more challenging than you'd think to make a digital image that looks like non-digital media. Already lacking the surface texture, you need to tweak your tools and program(s) according to some approximate of what your eye think it's supposed to look like.


Wanting to do another quick animation, I needed a background. Then I realized I hadn't done any environmental drawing in too long, and never stressed it on myself in college--double whammy, so I got cracking at this. I probably drew 3 or 5 in my sketchbook before starting this, and this drawing has 6-8 layers for various generations, shading, and elements.

Yea, I'm that guy in your art class who re-did something to death, and might not have noticed a glaring problem while working on some minutia I wanted to get better at.

PS: To students of art: It's on your own shoulders to challenge yourself and vary your range of abilities. Especially since almost all upper-division art classes are "You have work due in 3-6 weeks, use your lab time to full effect, I'll be watching."

Quick Walk Cycle

It's been a while since I did one of these, so thinking about it I found for myself a quick project to do tonight. Wasn't as quick as it should have been, nor is it polished at all, but it had to be done, and it was fun to do it.

It started as the standard 4-frame walk (contact, down, pass, up) before adding two more frames to make a 6-frame walk. Never drawn one before since all the basic exercises are the 4-frame. Plus it now makes the step 50% longer to take the same step.

Good exercise. I might throw in a bit more time on it in a day or two just because I should for practice and cleanliness.

Moustache Dog in Ink

I was at a coffee shop reading a bit and trolling the intarwebs for something to draw from. I've gotta go somewhere once or twice a week to avoid the temptation of video games in my room. My scanning or Reddit's /r/pics found a mustachioed puppy that I added a few extra details to whilst I quickly doodled it out in pen and pencil. Had a lot of fun actually.

Link to original for as long as it lasts: http://imgur.com/gEC1V

Clay Head

First of all, you'll see the scale. All of the sculpting was done with the hard end of that paint brush in the first few pictures--which wasn't easy for someone who's never really done any sculpting to memory. The clay is "Klean Klay"; not sure i it's cheap stuff or not, but I got 2 pounds of it for $5 at Utrecht around a month ago.

Second of all you'll see a dramatic shift in facial construction and that the ears I spent large amounts of time toying with are suddenly gone. I was drinking here with two friends and one of them, a girl by the name of Laura, who has a rather skilled hand at art, looked at my block head and pronounced she "could do it better!" And then proceeded to make my square-jawed cartoon character more realistic and without ears. My focus was on facial expression, so I was both impressed and annoyed at the same time. Due to the ears and the hardness of the clay at room temperature being in conflict anyway, I was far from butt-hurt.

About a week and half later (last night) I was looking at the now egg-shaped head and realized how I was to cope with the lack of ears. The head's new right ear changes when the lighting changes because it did not last the night. It was half fallen off when I woke, and it tore itself free by the time I was ready to take pictures.

So, yea, in retaliation to her alterations I gave him bunny ears and buck teeth.

In the future I will play with this stuff much more, but I'll definitely need some sort of support underneath, meaning I need to figure out what wire I can safely use as a skeleton.

Pick Your Battles

Drawing I did in or just under an hour while "watching" (listening) a dialogue heavy movie.

Mato!!!

I got my new tablet finally. Replaced by Wacom 12WX with a superior model.

Anyway, I had absolutely no idea what to draw on it. So, this was my get-used-to-the-new-toy! drawing.