New Fall 13, In Stride 6

I've been quite distracted from my illustration, by my design work. But I was home early this evening and made myself do a few more coloring bits, particularly on the clothing (in this case the hat). I forget how much I like the watercolor effects of some of my Photoshop brushes...

Trying Something New

I went to Brooklyn to have dinner at my friends' place, and their darling daughter Luna is growing so fast, and changing in my eyes. I tried to get an impression of her but this hardly looks like her, but I did like experimenting again with the pastels as it used to be my medium of choice a couple of decades ago. Coming home late, I forgot to draw and post before it hit midnight, so this is late for yesterday's post.

Tumbler

Had a lovely dinner earlier this evening at the off-the-beaten-path Brooklyn resto Bistro Petit. Rainer's been raving about it for weeks and it was a joy to spend time at this modest little eatery with amazingly high-quality food. It's BYOB so Rainer brought a lovely red, and we drank everything off tumblers.

Numbed By The Numbers

Make-up post! Last night I was so busy working out the numbers on a pitch, trying to get all the pieces together for a rather huge rush job, and it was driving me mad so I didn't even realize I had gone past midnight and hadn't posted. So I'm posting my ode to those numbers (which by the way, were problematic the next morning. So I hadda crunch them again!).

Buzzd

An impromptu call from a friend in the nabe led to two cocktails too many. This is what you get when someone draws all buzzed on tequila. This is Beelzeebub, a demonic character from the anime series Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san, who looks like a penguin but is actually a fly. It's a series I only just discovered, and the first season was hilarious, the second, not at all...

New Fall 13, In Stride 5

Returning to a drawing after some absence, you see flaws. Or at least, you see things that you would change. For some reason, the entire body of this drawing looked wrong - too big, lacking a certain flow. I tried over and over to correct it, and have made some progress. But it may be progress to my eyes only, which is fine - as much as I post these, I'm just drawing and documenting it. But I did think to myself, I'm not just sketching a photo - I'm actually changing it, if even just a little bit, to suit how I think the drawing should look. That made me happy - it made me realize that I AM contributing to something new, as opposed to just copying a photo.

Strap Hangers 2

Now I'm just sussing out the entire outfit. I actually was inspired by a Ladytron music video that featured a room full of teenage girls (around 17) dancing in school uniforms, and I liked the silhouette of their skirts. But I was trying to think of a way to make the skirt part of a sexy ensemble. To me that meant keeping the upper torso bare, but I didn't want some conventional decolletage or expected top. So I went about with my 'boobcage' selectively showing parts of the breast in less conventional ways i.e. underboob, although it's been something I've always gravitated to. Chris Claremont once told me the costume I designed for the Black Queen was too provocative for comics but it showed up anyway less than a year later (I'm looking at YOU, Goblin Queen). Now underboob is actually a word (well, sort of). Dunno if I succeeded, but it's edgy methinks (I'm reminded of men in kilts)

Strap Hangers

I had an idea for a super-hero-esque costume and figured I'd do it instead of all the other drawings I have planned and pending that need attention... lol.

Anyhow, this has underboob, side boob and a whole frickin' boob cage complete with a mask. It's like a space bra. What's the function? None!  I just like the way it plays out. ;)

Melissa and her friend Heron

Melissa and her friend Heron were growing concerned: where IS that waiter with their Mai Tais?

Metal Seaweed

One stye I've gotten from comics that I love to explore from time to time, is drawing locks of hair like they were small sheets of gnarled steel. I think Rick Leonardi is the person I can identify as the first I'd seen who did it, but it's a fun way to stylize. It's kinda like how hair looks like it s a solid mas when someone is underwater, almost like fine seaweed (although this rendering is more like long, large tendrils of seaweed)... Anyhow, I've been sketching on a cardboard sheet while waiting for my enormous Photoshop file to attempt to save, as I'm designing a huge banner and the file, last I saw, reached a limit of 6 gigs (and it refused to save). Drawing to be uploaded as soon as I can clear space from this damn memory hogging Photoshop process...

Spiked

The Met's Punk fashion exhibit's gala was hard to escape the next day, so I still had it in my head when I started sketching earlier tonight, a bit too late to make it for yesterday. I've been concentrating on my design work, so I just let the time slip by. Anyhow, she's a bit fashion punky (or maybe fashion fetish, more accurately).

Malice 2

Retooled 'Malice's' face because she was too damn sweet for a character named Malice, but I do not recognize this face as one of mine - the style is just so odd. I dunno where it came from, although I suspect i's trying to fit in the 40s look after the fact into a facial angle that doesn't really work...

Malice

I was watching music videos while doing the stairmaster at the gym, and a Madonn video featuring what looked strongly to be Dolce & Gabbana outfits had Madonna wearing high-waisted shorts and a low cut top. It reminded me of a costume I designed in the late 80s, with a very 40s feeling. It was for a character named Malice. I thought I'd try drawing it again tonight.

Ghostly

I had no idea what to draw, so I made the tools influence that decision. I got an odd 300 pixel wide very smudge-y/ powdery Photoshop brush (don't even know if it was something I had found or if it was something that came with CS 5.5). So I just kept trying it out - it kept losing part of the strokes, so if it's some sort of natural media simulator, I don't know what it's supposed to be. The drawing, however, became somewhat fuzzy and ghostly, hence the title.

Rainer 3

Hung out with my friend Rainer and forgot I haven't tackled his portrait in a while. So I hauled it out of the file stores and worked on it a bit. It's coming along, albeit slowly.

New Fall 13, In Stride 4

More Max/Geller goodness. Now that I'm getting thoroughly familiar with Max's face, I'm starting to get mood and stylize his retro-20s/30s look (which is quite au courant when you think how Gatsby he can look)

Comics Nostalgia

When I was younger I got disappointed when favorite comic book artists evolved their styles to something that didn't appeal to me anymore. Dave Cockrum was one such artist, as I was younger and in love with his 'Neal Addams Lite' style form in his early career, and I kinda disliked his faces when he returned to drawing the X-men years later, after Byrne's and Paul Smith's runs. But I understand it now that I've had time to evolve myself, and it's nothing you can anticipate (or even control, I'd imagine). So when I am at a loss what to draw like I was last night when I arrived home too late to post (and too buzzed on cocktails to draw adequately), and I try to sketch an old default and fail, it makes me ruminate on artistic evolution.

Time was that I could draw superheroes effortlessly, but decades after my interest has peaked, it's a struggle to draw the styles I used to idolize. In fact, I spent so much time trying, it I kept wondering why I even wanted to make it look like I used to draw. Which is interesting, because I'd already developed a newer comicbook style in the past 10 years, but even that I don't try to do. How strange to know I'm evolving and improving, but unable or unwilling to draw the way I used to.

Hair Squall

I love model Lucho Jacob's squall of hair, it just feels very fresh and modern now. So when illustrator extraordinaire Kevin Wada did his own similarly coiffed males, I got into it. This is more comic book style than fashion, methinks, but also somewhere in between...

SpaceBob

In the 70s the futuristic space age look was all about bowl cuts and shiny bobs. As I was sketching in her hair I was reminded of that time. 

Liam and his friend Heron

Liam and his friend Heron hoped people would mistake them for a performance art installation.

Rice On The Runway!

Well, the Venus of the Rice, on the runway. I'm feeling a bit of a victory run because a difficult design situation on a project of mine seems to be showing some light at the end of the tunnel. And who better to exult for me that my preternaturally happy Zenaida, wearing a bit of makeup and werqing it for the runway. I kinda love this one.

Red Hotness

Years ago I met a gay couple who were so young and beautiful  I thought that either of them could be a good subject to draw. One is a redhead who's been working as a bartender at one of the popular Chelsea gay bars. and he's gotten quite buff in the years since I met him. I saw him again earlier tonight when my client Brandon and I decided to have a couple of drinks when I went meet him (and deliver the commissioned Zenaida piece I did a couple of weeks ago) and Jacob was tending bar. Jacob's a different kind of redhead from yesterday. Seems like there's a thread these past two days... Anyhow, I got home too late last night - and too tipsy from whiskey! - to draw. This is a makeup sketch of Jacob based on a photo of him online that's just branded into my brain...

Red Hot

Had a photoshoot for a drawing idea, with a cute young redhead. He photographed even better than I imagined! But at the same time, I'm trying to reconcile the image I had so very strongly in my head with the drawing that I want to do. We'll see how it develops.

Kissyface 4

My lipstick lesbians. Not exactly representative, but a very particular-looking lesbian couple that conforms more with the 60s style visuals... think Wilma and Betty from the Flintstones, if they actually got married to each other. Ha!

Kissyface 3

Well, have to deliver all the sketches tomorrow and I forgot I had to clean this one out and make back views, as well as add details... but it was hard working on something I felt was already finished with in my head. Hard to get into it but made some headway.

Thumbmales 2

Trying to figure out more poses before the shoot this weekend (or next week). I need a few more ideas that will hopefully make a good shot...

Thumbmales

I'm taking photographs of my friend / ex personal trainer for the first time again in years, and I had some ideas but need to jot them down before the shoot, to make sure I'm ready, esp since he's expecting me to do something fun and edgy. But all I think I need do is some typically current-day homoerotic beauty shots. And last Winter, when I brought out an old sweater of mine, I started playing around with it and wondering how it would look with a hot naked man. Guess we'll find out!

I'm very into the immediacy of these drawings, esp. since I sketched them out really quickly, taking no more than 5 minutes or so per pose: it's when I'm happiest about what knowledge of anatomy I have, combined with the sweeping gesture I would hope for in a finished drawing. My quick sketches often captures what my full-on renderings fail to do. I know myself and the motion does get stiffened up a bit as soon as I get into details. A Facebook friend was telling me how he thought my lines looked like I did them in natural media, so I've been a bit inspired to get all sketchy and revel in gestural drawing lately (in case you haven't noticed).

Blue Cowboy

I watched Brokeback Mountain finally last night/early this morning (around 1:30 am). And I was so enthralled by it that I kept re-watching scenes over and over again. Heath Ledger 's performance was amazing, and I felt doubly bad that he had passed away because the sense of loss in the movie got multiplied by his real life passing. I don't know why it didn't hit me as much the first time I saw it, but this time around I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm frankly very melancholy because of it. Blue, actually.

I couldn't keep cowboys out of my mind as a result, and I don't even like them as a look/feel/genre. I don't even know if I've ever tried to draw one before. Well, I did one sketch and my program totally crashed and I lost the entire thing. I felt so disheartened I didn't want to draw again, but I did, and it came out a bit better, actually. So I'm glad I did.

Didn't have any references, so this is just all from my head, except for teh hat, which I got SO wrong I had to find out how cowboy hats look...

Blockheads

I'm planning a piece as an homage to Antonio Lopez's expressive fashion style, with teh quirkiness of Egon Schiele because my model Max looks like a Schiele drawing come to life. There's something so old world about his features that make him completely modern as a result. Anyhow, I have all these big ideas, but after my shoot the other day, I need to get the feeling and flow and layout just right to match what I see in my head. I want to to flow and have a 30s deco feel with a bit of Metropolis, but I need to make sure all the poses work... so I need to block it (get it? Block heads? Okay, okay, I'll stop).

Mad For Max 3

I'm a bit uneasy right now because I have a friend snoring away (well, lightly) on my couch while I try to work in my darkened studio and not wake him up. I thought I'd try drawing something else but I might as well go for more Max, especially since I have quite a few to do! image to follow.

Mad For Max 2

Had a photo shoot today with new male model Max, and tried to get poses for the Antonio-esque tableau I had planned on doing. Hopefully it will work out...

Kissyface 2

The cake topper designs I've been doing include options for lesbians and gay men, but I made the brides more lipstick lesbian just because I think it's more what the client might need.

Skull Searching

I think I've mentioned before that I never took formal anatomy classes. Now that I think of it, we had life-drawing sessions, but we never were told how to build up a human body from skeletal system on. I have regretted that in recent years, as I don't have the foundation for knowing why and how the body and face moves. So with this sketch, I tried to think of the skull underneath, and then trace the skin that would go over it. It's interesting, because the face is somewhat different from what I would normally draw. The act of drawing becomes more fun than the actual sketch itself...

Bears Repeating 2

We've got revisions... and more cheery teddies! The client wanted them to be more neutral, so I've named them Mocha, Latte and Espresso.

Sideline

I'm a bit frazzled after doing my taxes and dealing with a client whose requests are a bit exhausting. I think I just need to refuel and get my creative energies back up after a weekend prepping for taxes. So just a quickie of a trenchcoated guy...

Carving Out A Face

I was never taught how to formally do anatomy, whether in school or in my personal training. I never learned how to construct a human figure with the skeleton as the framework to build a form on - I always drew from the outside contour because that's all I see. So it's taken me a LONG time to get where I am today, and I'm still not great at fleshing out a face. I only just learned how to do a 3/4 view mouth corner a few years ago because of this blog, but when I start drawing features, it's hard for me to know exactly where a cheekbone rests in relation to the nose I just laid out. I just have to keep fiddling with the features as I build them in. I kept thinking of abandoning this doodle at various stages, because I didn't know how to draw it!  But I persisted, and it's a bit better than I expected, although I'm sure if I looked at it again after some time, I'll see horrors I'll need to correct!

Tyrus and his friend Heron

Tyrus and his friend Heron sometimes have disagreements over how to resolve their disagreements.

Tequila Memories

Which just means when you drink tequila, you'll forget a lot, like remembering to post a blog post! But this is supposed to be me, sidled up to the bar with my friend Ernie, drinking frozen margaritas well too early in the day (let alone the season, with the Fall redux yesterday).

Plump Up The Volume

Zenaida's a big gal, but after I added more shading, she looks even larger than life (especially after shooting her form from that extreme angle). I even added some movement swooshes of shading just for the heck of it. This commission is done, now I just need to do my taxes. :)

You're Making Me Brush

For my commission, I decided to use charcoal, as it would be smoother and have more depth on the paper I had chosen. However, I noticed that the grain of the sheet was creating too coarse a texture, so I had to blend if I wanted to get  smoother finish like the one I have framed in my apartment, which is what the client originally wanted. So I thought I might have to go out and get a blending paper stick (I don't know what those are actually called. Just 'blender'?) but didn't want to wait until I got back from an art store. So I used brushes, which I had heard you could use on pastels and charcoal, and it worked out beautifully, and I discovered a new tool/technique to use!  Gah, you'd think Id have know after all these years of sketching. Anyhow, this is the charcoal sketch commission of Zenaida. I'm going to darken her a bit more and add more shadows to volumize the figure even more...

Pencil Her In

I'd been commissioned to do a natural media version of Zenaida, so I was texted my various graphite and charcoal pencils. I think the graphite will get too shiny if I apply too heavily so I'm thinking of charcoal, but my charcoal sticks aren't my fave so I might have to get a new one.

Nose Job

I was wondering whether or not I had done anything but draw carousel animals all of last week, and I realized the "Big Hair Thing" sketch was an interlude from all the product illustrations. However, I was thoroughly unhappy with the nose I drew, so I set about correcting it as well as his eye.

Bears Repeating

I have to do teddy bears for this product job, and I've done so many of them in my recent career I'm not sure how to approach them in any way that's new. I figured just go for the cutesy, simple style. These are roughs, and I'll refine the linework later.

Humpy 4

"Kaboobie" here is done, and he's kitted out in my version of stereotypical Moroccan drag.

Carousel 4

So the zebra looks so graphically pure while the elephant and the rest look like sketches. Except I like the zebra the most. Eep. Gonna have to find a way to stylize them all into the same style.

Edit: well, I was working on the pachyderm and the rhino, and I went with a style I've been itching to incorporate more into my work, and it has a vaguely 50s illustration style that I'm digging. Eliminating the outlines was always in the plan, and it really did help unify the graphic sensibilities. Now I just need to dress up the zebra's livery.

I love my rhino. He's got a spring in his step!

Stripe It Up

I don't think I've ever drawn a zebra before in my life!  How weird is that? Well, first full zebra - I did do a quickie sketch of one just recently, of which this is the more realized, towards-final one.

Humpy 4

When I was a kid one of my favorite cartoons was Shazzan, about a couple of white kids who had a genie as a friend and went on adventures with him riding their winged camel Kaboobie (I'm not making this up). Kaboobie (I don't know if that was the spelling, but that was his name) was the inspiration for this camel's outfit.