Category Archives: Illustration
Loss
How to Draw Page 51
People seemed to quite enjoy the artwork comparisons a few posts ago so in an attempt to entertain those people again here is some stuff about how I do a page these days…
Developmental Drawing Bits
two years of drawing things over and over again does yield some improvements:
On Getting Better
I was thinking about writing a bunch about the creative process on my current story and how the more you do stuff the more everything changes. In a good way. But that would require a level of presumption and narcissism that I would not feel comfortable with. It should just be sharing my experience of a developing project but if in the end it turns out to be a bunch of guff, well, that would be embarrassing.
Instead I’m going to put a few of the same pages together that I’ve drawn a bunch of times and they should speak for themselves.
One thing of note is that as the style develops and the pages get steadily better, the pages that are already done get steadily worse.
This begs the question of whether this will ever end. I hope we will reach an acceptable plateau soon.
^This page featured in an earlier blog post, probably from over a year ago and is now classified as “SUBSTANDARD for all of the reasons”
The content contained above in one page has now been embiggened to four pages of higher quality work. You’ll notice the change in style as well as quality, preferring the thicker lines and bolder contrast of the comic book medium over the thinner lines and less contrast of whatever I was producing before:
However I am also expecting these to progress into becoming substandard within an alarmingly short space of time. This is a modestly depressing thought but also a slightly exciting one but mostly not really much of a thought at all at the moment because I have other things to think about. Like redoing all of my earlier pages. For example:
The way I want the world in the story presented has been changing gradually and is now at a satisfying point so I’ll try to keep it here. At first I was favouring showing as little as possible but that was “PROBLEMATIC to future developments” and lacking the depth and conviction required to ensure belief in the place as being a place. Also there needed to be “BETTER CLOUDS” as I like drawing clouds and I was conning myself out of drawing satisfying clouds.
That was all a lot wordier than I wanted it to be and goes against one of my introductory statements:
“Instead I’m going to put a few of the same pages together that I’ve drawn a bunch of times and they should speak for themselves.”
and probably makes me sound presumptuous and narcissistic. It’s really hard to come across as a likable person in a blog post. It’s a good job you’re an idiot.
Work Stuff Pictures
Work stuff in a pile
Work stuff all on the floor
Work stuff to do. On the floor. This is the very rough draft for the next 51 pages of Flat Land. I reckon two years to finish is a good guess. This is a sad thing. It’s darn hard doing this junk. Darn darn hard.
Me vs DJ Oslek Podcast 1
Most likely you’ve got here from there but check out the first of a new podcast series by DJ Oslek of Frijsfo Beats. With additional illustration by myself. Special website and colour artwork coming soon!
Freestyle Party Post
this is an update based on the photos I’ve taken lately because we need to blog but we don’t want to have to think much.
First photos for you concern the little wooden drawing fellow. I got one assuming that they were useful. They are not useful for two reasons.
1. Their limbs do not bend enough. They cannot touch their shoulders, nor squat as if to take a poo. These are things that real people can do and as such are things that may have to be drawn, requiring a model.
2. Their pointy extremities make every pose either very camp or very melodramatic or both. Hence:
The next photos illustrate what it would be like if you were to climb up a rose from swimming in the vase to being on the summit:
So now you don’t have to feel like that is something that you need to do.
The final photos are a bit on where work is at. I finally pretty much done 12 pages to a standard that I’m happy with for the Flat Land story and so that’s good and that has taken about a year. So great there. I’m taking a bit of a break from that now although it’s cool that I’m finally excited about working on it and it feels like it makes sense. I’m breaking to do a quickish comic style music video. I’ll make it into a youtube or a vimeo with a picture change every four beats. The second picture is the first sixteen out of one hundred and twenty one pictures. Ignore the fourteenth, I have redrawn that separately. They’re not too impressive yet but I reckon it’ll be fun with some colour slapped on.
Where It’s At
I’ve had a bit of a rethink over Flat Land. Decided to step up my game. It was supposed to be a stepping up in game anyway, but having basically finished about the first third (quickest third too), it became apparent that it is no where near as good as it could be and I’m trying to rush it because it takes forever to get stuff done. Here are points:
1 – Not enough establishing of the landscape/atmosphere. It’s supposed to be pretty empty and bleak at first but this needs to be established. Also, the landscape has to play more of a part once the action starts.
2 – Characters not consistent enough, especially the boy, but I’m used to drawing them now and know what they should look like so hopefully I can iron that out.
3 – Too many profile views. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing but there are a bit too many and whilst they make it easier to tell what’s going on they make it less dramatic and interesting to look at.
That’s my main 3 gripes I guess. I started planning it all out properly but then I lost interest in that again when I got excited about redoing stuff. I have also not really finished the story properly, but it’s all progress and maybe this is just my way of working. If I don’t maintain my interest then I’ll never get anywhere so skipping about might be the only way I can move forward.
Anyway, as a treat for reading that you can have the new first page of the story:
It has a poem on it that I wrote when I was looking after cows in the fens. The whole story is a distillation of that time. I suppose I was a bit lonely, but according to my stories I’m lonely all of the time.
Graphic Comic Update
I am nearing the end of penning up my graphic comic for the Vintage books competition and here is a thing of it:
There will be lots of points available to anyone who can say what’s going on in it when it’s done. Not because it’s any kind of conceptual masterpiece but more because it’s my usual half-cocked sort of sort it out as you go along approach. Sosioayga is the acronym for that. I am pioneering the Sosioayga technique. My excuse is that I am a pioneer. I am a pioneer.