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.

Composition practice

It seems I've forgotten to erase the pencils... Oh well.

It's supposed to be a- hmm.... I don't know actually... Oh well. I drew it, that's what's important, and here we are looking at it.

I had just watched Barry Lyndon, directed by the amazing Stanley Kubrik, before sketching this (do you see it in the setting, with all the hay, masonry, and cross-shaped windows where Barry and Lord Bullingdon had their duel). As I was mulling over what to take from the scene as I remembered it, Isildur and Narsil from Lord of the Rings popped in my head. Ah, there it was. That shall be my center of attention, I decided on a whim. Obviously, I didn't plan it out too well.

A large, brick building with a high, vaulted ceiling and windows. No floors or levels. Piles of hay all around and somewhere around the bottom center there's a sword sticking out of the floor. My main design elements- err... my props? Is that what they're called? I have no idea. I don't know these technical terms. I just read some books and drew for awhile. All I knew was, I wanted to pull the reader's attention towards the sword. To do that, I had to employ a few little tricks.  Or attempt to use them...

There was perspective, there was the line. This is not referring to line art, but to how the parts of the drawing all come together to try and draw your attention from one part to another with visual interest and other little details. Also, contrast.

While I used a lot of black in my older, much more embarrassing, drawings I feel I'm a lot closer now to the spirit of Mike Mignola's (one of my idols) artwork than the visual aping in the linework and basic shapes. I would have to thank Scott Allie for that and his comments on Mike's style which helped me realize one of the things that just makes Mike's artwork work. When the foreground is black, or mostly black, keep the background light. When the background is black, keep the foreground light. There's also a whole heap of crap regarding color and Mike's artwork but that's a whole other topic. A prime example of how to color Mike right is not getting too dark with the coloring (which is funny when you look at the heaps of black he just dunks on every page). Dave Stewart and James Sinclair did this amazingly well throughout Hellboy's run. To see Mike colored less successfully, look to Bram Stoker's Dracula, a pencil job by Mike in his pre-Hellboy days, with Topps comics. Notice how dark and incoherent it sometimes is due to the dark colors and all the black?

Sorry about that, I just get passionate with regards to Mike and the majesty of his work. I just love them to all hell.

Anyway, hopefully I did something right and made the blade and the area around it standout. I could have also used some white ink to add more "bricks". Maybe a skillful cropping could improve it. Maybe I should have stuck with the perspective and brought the eye level down a good deal more, gave less space to the whole pile of nothing around the windows and did more. Ach well... better luck next time.