A Growing Capability in my Figure Exercises and Inking Blues

Not what I'm actually using but it's a good enough facsimile,
I should think.

Good news,

I've found a new play thing to make art with. Not really new, to be true, but new it's new in that I see them with a new light. A light of excitement and desire that I had not seen in a long time in dealing with art materials. I'm speaking of... brushes. Simple ass brushes. Chinese brushes, to be exact. The kind that isn't like our beloved Pentel Pocket Brush Pens, nor our Kolinsky or Sables that cost a good deal, at least in comparison to some Chinese brushes (so you get what I'm talking about, a PPBP or good sables costs around $16 for the most part online in American stores and $20-25 in local stores, online and retail, in the Philippines WHILE Chinese brushes can go for as low as $0.25...).

 This is where the BAD news comes in. I've been wasting my time with these beautiful brushes, very good brushes. None offer the interplay of sensitivity, price, and sharpness that I seek, that was until I (re)found my Chinese brushes.

Bored and stuck in my room due to heavy rains, I took up my old bottles of ink and just played around with them for a few hours. Oh those brushes were wonderful after some frustration with my pen nibs which refused to work. The brushes were consistently offering what I've long
been searching for while making do well enough with my usual kit of Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, Pentel Waterbrush (with its bristles swapped out for the Kuretake Waterbrush bristles and filled with a concentrated form of Higgins Carbon Black), Da Vinci Maestro, and my Staedtler Pigment Liner.

With these Chinese brushes I can also lay claim to the idea that I'm following in the footsteps of the legendary Philippine artists like Nestor Redondo, Alfredo Alcala, and the like who too used a Chinese-style brush in their own renowned illustrations and comics work. Ah... one day I'll draw like them. One day....

Note the Chinese brush in the hands of the great Redondo.

Some of the drawings that I've sketched lately and then inked. They came about from my usual morning figure drawing exercises which started to show their returns, at least according to some people in the art and comics discords that I hang out in sometimes.

So that you, the hypothetical reader, might have at least some kind of a comparison, these are purely graphite and figure drawing, no inking.

I really like these ones for some reason. It's probably because I really feel the Mignola in these sketches.

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The PPBP+Waterbrush with ink sketches

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Chinese brush inks

Credits to Line of Action and Quickposes for the reservoir of images that these were sketched from.

I'm still new to the entire field of Chinese brush-constrained inking. Might be awhile to get used to but I should think it'd be worth it.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, whoever you might be.

Sources:
https://img-new.cgtrader.com/items/186591/6d5cde7b3d/chinese-calligraphy-brush-pen-3d-model-max-obj-fbx-c4d-ma-mb.jpg

https://static2.jetpens.com/images/a/000/106/106220.jpg?mark64=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5qZXRwZW5zLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvYXNzZXRzL3dhdGVybWFyay5wbmc&markalign64=dG9wLHJpZ2h0&markscale=19&q=90&s=3942bfcd93e57a6fd5ed35393e59febd

https://img0.etsystatic.com/055/0/9672239/il_570xN.729315700_luza.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Nestor_Redondo_%281118250566%29.jpg/1024px-Nestor_Redondo_%281118250566%29.jpg

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.