Current Status of the Jury-rigged Watercolor Blocks

It looks okay-ish at first aaaaaand theeeeeeeen-

-they're a bit shit upon a closer analysis...

Took a bit of effort to separate the pieces away from each other.

Made a couple booboos with the x-acto knife.

Don't mind the homework and Platinum Preppy Highlighter in the background.

See where I tried, partly in vain, to try and cut away parts of it for easy removal?

I shouldn't have jumped into things all excited, spending a few hours coating the sides of these stacks of paper and pressing down on them while they dried. They're a bit hard to take off, even if you've left a good chunk un-glued and ready for removal from the rest of the block. Imagine what it'd be like to do it with a block that's been coated from all sides. Now add the field conditions that come with urban sketching that aren't there in one's studio, or basement or dirty old room, what have you. RIP.

Guess the next generation are gonna have one side left un-glued. Aw well.

Same palette I talked about before but I made this with a waterbrush than any tradional watercolor brush for painting with this.

Have the sketch I submitted for the Jackson Urban Sketching Competition. As far as I can tell based on the Terms and Conditions I can post the drawing elsewhere without fear of losing my right to participate in the contest. Hopefully...

I drew the underdrawing a few days before I painted over it, both on location and in the space of a couple hours. I may be new to the medium, but I think I may be getting a better handle over painting backgrounds. Some progress, as negligible as it is, is better than none at all!

 

 Also, have a recent watercolor sketch.

 Oh and a map I made for a DnD session for a guy.

Some random crap pt. 2, cont. of the one from yesterday

Some other character sketches for the thing I was talking about the other day.

The prostitute character from the script.

The Matador. I'm playing around with his facial expression.

More of the Matador.

Some random crap

I'm tackling another project. I'm really excited for this one with the shift in style that I'm planning for it. I wanna use more abstract and cartoony designs for the characters while trying my hand at large-scale crosshatching again for the backgrounds. Give it a nice contrast, you know. Kinda like Cerebus, especially when Gerhard took over as background artist while Dave focused on the writing, character drawing, and lettering.

A couple studies. Thank you Google Images.

Using really big, sweeping curves here, gonna try to move away from edges and corners for this one.

Some practice for the backgrounds and observational drawing of arms.

It's mostly in the thumbs stages right now, even then it's still mostly in my head and I have yet to commit it to paper, but I already have a script handed to me and all I need to do is draw it.

I intend to go Chaykin-esque with my layouts. A lot of American Flagg! aping here. That and I wanted to change up the station points of my panels too. Be just as clear but with more esoteric methods of communication of message. In application, think of it like this.

Rather than drawing the main antagonist raising a club to beat the main protagonist with straight. Why not draw suggest the club in the previous pages, devote a good chunk of it a panel or two prior to a certain panel, and in said certain panel, where the antagonist is about to beat the protagonist, just draw the shoulder-chest junction area with the shoulder raised and really exaggerate the cloth folds than focus on the hand and the club itself. I've never been too good with my words so the explanation may not be too clear... bah. You'll see it eventually. 

The after

The before

Apparently, there's a way to transform watercolor sketchbooks into watercolor blocks. I've been itching to try it out with my Grandluxe Sketchpad and a Clairefontaine Paint-On Multi-technique paper, the latter of which I plan to use for drawing comics that involve wet media. If it were dry media, some heavy inking in the big chunks of black aside, I might go with some Hahnemuhle Skizzen Sketch pads. Anyway, all I'd need is a good glue of sorts and a throwaway brush. The glue, made by a company called Redstone who makes cheap Chinese ink and India ink, is cheap too. A little bit less than $2 for 250g. The amount I needed to pay for shipping was more expensive than the actual item itself. Ha. Kinda reminds me of when I bought some fountain pen converters for my Pilot pens off of Amazon. It's always the shipping...

The other method includes glue once again, named Tear Meander, but it's a glue made for fixing shoes and cloth but a watercolorist recommended it and it conforms to ASTM standards so it's gotta be good.

That's all for now.

Premier Deadlines

http://premiercomics.tumblr.com/post/161947535835/premier-comics-submission-premier-comics-is-back

Why not give this a shot, try making a comic.

More on the new comic I'm making

In order to give the comic a more religious vibe, I've decided to study the forms and linework of Eastern Orthodox icons which have a certain ethereal quality to them as well as a distinct artistic style unique to them.

An icon I've culled from the shallow waters of Google Images

The first (crappy) sketch.You can see some of my notes in the picture, it's pertaining to how the facial structure is off compared to the original.

Hatching is annoying. So... maximalist and perfect. It clashes very much with my impressionist influences.

I traced this over another drawing of Orthodox Jesus I made earlier (which I can't post cus I can't find it). Someone pointed out I drew the hair too big and it kinda looked like a turban.

Drew this with my fancy new brush, an Escoda if you can no doubt see. This too I traced from that lost sketch.

Starting by sketching Icon renditions of Jesus Christ feels appropriate before tackling Saul/Paul.

Not aping a painting here. All imagination. I've been reading about how Saul looks like and this is how my interpretation turned out.

I've also been thinking of offering the comic some fussy decorations much like the ones you'd find in illuminated manuscripts and other classical text. In modern times, you can point to Jean Giraud's illustrations/comics and some of Mike Mignola's earlier work for having similar design elements on the pages. 

See the little bumps on the near top of the page? There are better, more obvious examples of this in Arzach but I can't find them online.

An attempt was made

Using some newly bought and some old/well used art materials, I made a little sketch in watercolor. It's badly made, mostly cus I'm inexperienced with the medium, but I'm very much interested in branching out in something outside of my usual crap. I am okay/sub-par with coloring people but I fall apart with backgrounds. Oh well. I just need to practice.

Sketchbook is a Grandluxe Monologue A5 Sketchpad, the 200gsm one, with its pages being soaked with water on both sides and left to dry before being flattened a day prior. I wrote the date which I started drawing on the thing on the side in both ink and white gel pen, Uni Signo Broad. Once I finish using the thing I'll write the date of its retirement next to the day I started using it. The life of my sketchbooks usually last between three to four months.
The paints I used are from various sources, the brands being Holbein, Winsor & Newton, White Nights, and Senellier. They're tube paints that I left to dry in some halfpans or fullpans before slapping in my palette. The pans and palette are from a local Filipino company called Happy Pan. Brush used is a frankenbrush which is the unholy spawn of a Kuretake Waterbrush body with the bristles coming from a Pentel Waterbrush. I have a tiny Sakura Waterbrush hidden snug in the palette's side for extra water and cleaning.
I drew the thing with a Rotring leadholderw ith Koh-I-Noor 2mm lead, and a Pentel Pocket Brush full of Daler-Rowney Kandahar Drawing Ink. Information written outside the live area are made with my Lamy Vista (F) with Noodler's Lexington Gray.

The setting, some details of which you may no doubt read, is of a place called the "Zen Garden". It can be found in the Ateneo de Manila University campus. I made this little brush-and-ink thing with some watercolor. I made a semi-indepth pencil sketch before obliterating most of it in ink with the intention of continuing those details in watercolor. Despite my inexperience, the position I was in, and the hot, humid weather at the time, I had fun making this. Time passed by quickly too. I spent an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes, on this in total. Satisfying really, despite the quality of the piece.

I'm going to recreate the thing on the next page, much more severely cropped and (hopefully) better painted. Without the ink though.

These other ones were made long ago and with different paint, Prang specifically. Unlike the professionally made, commercially available kit that I currently use, I had this badly made palette that I made myself. Those too were fun. I should have picked up watercolor as a medium earlier.

The drawings were some studies I made on ancient Israeli conditions and its environment. It's directly related to the thumbnails of the comic I posted not too long ago. I should make some posts regarding my other studies also directly tied to the comic. Especially now that I made some more research into Saul/Paul's physical appearance and not just stuff based on paintings and illustrations by Orthodox icon painters and illustrators.

The artstyle I'm using is partially based on Mike Mignola's style. Particularly this shot from Hellboy: Wake the Devil. I might change the style up in the final illustrations, I'm thinking of emulating the style of the Orthodox paintings or pre-Renaissance paintings with the skewed perspective and all. Whatever best fits the mood and adds meaning to the story though, so until I make a proper decision I'm sticking with what's here on the blog.

Look at the guy in the back.

Some stuff

I made a few sketches to pass the time. I particularly like the evocative blending between my gray ink and the Private Reserve Velvet Black. Too bad the latter is made from dyes and so its lightfastness and archival quality is very much in doubt. Here too one can see one of the compositions I made to try and puzzle out a way to draw a particular scene.

Here one can see some very evocative blending between a gray ink and some black in. The former is a diluted black pigmented ink, the latter is a black fountain pen nk made even darker by letting it congeal a bit.

 

Have a look a a comic I've been making. It's still in the thumbail stage, but I've made good headway in its composition and visual language.

I wonder if it's in anyway blasphemous to edit the Bible's words in the way that I did in order to improve its rhythm and pacing...

More sketches

Working on another comic, but I'll finish the thumbs first before posting it there. In the mean time, have some recent sketches.

Gonna redo this one. Not totally satisfied with it.

Some people I've drawn while being out in public.

Doing this in conjunction with my reading of Tom Richmond's book (MAD Art of Caricature), based on some of the same pictures he featured and caricatured in the book.

Some Mignola-style aping. 

Have a sketch

I was bored and so I did this. Will make a much better version later on, here I was just lazy.

And it's done (comic)

I might have bitten off more than I can chew by inking this with art materials I'm not too familiar with, paper and pencils aside.

I probably should have used the brushes whose temperaments I'm more familiar with and whose balance I'm accustomed to. At least it was fun. That is until the brush springs itself in a different way than what I've adapted to... that's when the cursing begins and the opaque white ink enters the scene. Let's not forget the panel replacements. I did a good job with the first one, on the page with the black bleed. Buuuut I messed up with the first page, with the title. Aw well. Better luck next time.