Shaded and Bearded

I was browsing through Flickr and did a quick sketch of someone's photo of a bearded guy with glasses...

When in doubt...

... give them the bird. Yes, I didn't have the desire to draw anything too involved.

Kortajena

Top male model Jon Kortanjena is so iconic that I recognized him one day just by the shape of the back of his head (well, more of that mop of hair) while walking behind him on 6th one day.

Ford and his friend Heron

Ford and his friend Heron are glad to see each other.

A Place To Sty

My place is still such a sty after the painting of my bedchamber - still haven't put everything in order since so much stuff that was being stored I'm not contemplating getting rid of... just don't know how. So in the meantime, I feel like a pig...

Hairdone

This is really more what I had intended to sketch yesterday. Instead of drawing spontaneously, I used a reference to get the flow of a current pompapour hairstyle, which is all the rage now in ever larger volumes. You may recall if you're a longtime viewer of this blog that I was predicting this style would be all the rage via my sketches a couple of years ago, and voila, it's everywhere. I myself abandoned the look personally after wearing it for over a year, but am growing it back just because there isn't anything newer in the horizon just yet.

ANYhow, I was trying to get the flow of the way the hair is brushed. I think I did for the most part (no pun intended).

Hair

My apartment is a total mess so I barely had the energy to do a sketch. Funny how your environment affects your work. This sketch is a mess!

Hipsters

I was looking through Flickr and noticed some sketches by other illustrators who I surmised are younger than me. They channel the current generation's look better than I ever did, and I realized that that was me being out of touch with drawing a look I am really aware of, but don't necessarily idealize. So I had to see if I could draw a skinny-legged, scruffy-looking hipster with the best of them. Not bad, but notice I had to put some long, lean model-y type right next to him. Guess some things just won't change!

Tom & Lorenzo, Done

This year seems to be all about finishing unfinished drawings, and along with my portraits of Gareth and PJ, I thought I needed to address this drawing that I planned and kinda promised two years ago.

closeup view of the finished portraits.

Background story: two years ago, my friends Tom and Lorenzo thought that their blog needed to be upgraded, as they were changing their strategy as their audience grew, so they needed an update. I took some pics of them in my living room during their last visit to my apartment. They had since gotten really busy with that aspect of their lives and we haven't met up since. I don't know if this is even on target for how their blog has evolved in the past two years, but this is the idea I originally had. There were going to be a couple of other variations with costume changes and different backgrounds, but still with the same faces (hence the extra detail in their portraits). But considering how much work went into finishing this, I think this may be done, done, done.

Tlo, Backgrounded

Well, at least the beginnings of the layout. Damn, this thing is taking forever! Actually, I retooled Lorenzo's face quite a bit and made it wide, extending featured that I contracted.

Phoenix 2010.1

It's one thing to draw a line drawing and love it, it's another thing to try and flesh it out, and then realize the lines are unsuitable to a more realistic rendering. Well, maybe not realistic, but more realized. That's what happened as I put in shadows here - it just didn't translate to a good looking face without some major plastic surgery. So, it's a radically different face from yesterday's initial linework!

Phoenix 2010

Just thought I'd try a quick sketch and see if my faces have changed much since last time I attempted a comic book face. Truth is, it looks different and the same ...

Lip Serviced

I've been tooling around on the Tlo image again, and I really like how the lips turned out - I think I made them slightly glossier than the photo, but that's part of the fun!

Briskly Burberry, Watercolored

I think I tend to paint too lightly, although this is really the right color for this outfit (since it's based on an actual look from Burberry. But I tend to use light washes and even if I build them up via layers even digitally, I do tend to leave a lot of white space as highlights. Guess I'm still channeling Antonio Lopez images from my youth...

I do love this face...

Beautifully Spare

After a few minor adjustments, I just love the face I drew for the Burberry sketch. It's old comic book style but with the quick line of a fashion sketch. I was thinking how my faces can seem overwrought with detail sometimes nowadays (knowing how to draw too much can be a disadvantage) and as I looked through old comic book style drawings I did in the past, I loved how simple some of my faces were. This reminds me of that. I almost don't want to color it in.

Rico and his friend Heron

Rico and his friend Heron wait for their flight to arrive at Logan Airport.

Briskly Burberry

Spurred by the day before's quick fashion sketch of a Lanvin runway piece, I started designing dresses on a sheet of paper, inspired by draping ideas I'd seen in the past seasons, cropping up on magazines that I might browse through. I wasn't sure who originated the draping ideas currently in trend, but watching Project Runway spurred me to investigate. After an inspiring look at Roland Mouret's work, I ended up in Burberry, and decided to give one of his dresses (not the best design, but a cute visual) a croquis treatment. This is the shaded rough sketch.

Languid Lanvin

I was looking at a mannequin pose from the 80s on an online acquaintance's Flickr post (a Janet Suzman from the Lazy Lizzie collection by Rootstein), and I loved the form's attitude so much that I used it as a reference for a fashion sketch. I wanted something equally languid but modern, so I sketched a runway look from Lanvin's Spring 2011 show. I'm happy with how it turned out - it's a loose version of how I used to paint in watercolor (done digitally here in Painter). Plus I needed a break from all that portrait painting I've been doing of late.

Lo Sans T

There comes a point in drawing where it starts to gel, where you see which lines initially placed need reworking, and when they ARE reworked, what other things need to follow suit. But there's a direction that is finally right, and that you can proceed with the confidence that the drawing will indeed work out.

When I first lay down lines, I will either feel confident that I'm on the right path, or somewhat discouraged that it needs major reworking but I don't know how yet, so I leave it as is and hope that when I return to it I'll figure it out (hence the sometimes returning to it much, much later; years even, sometimes). It gets fun when you start to know what needs to be done, and you're confident about making the right changes. This drawing is starting to work for me. Thank goodness!

Tlo, Clothing

I was not loving the rough forms of the clothing, and worked hard to improve it, but it's gonna take more than casually fixing the silhouette and reducing the folds. Really going to have to make sure all the anatomy is right too, as I don't love the poses (nor the draping) in the photos I took, so I'm making things up as I go.

Breast In Show

Once upon a time, I drew nothing but half-naked to naked women. It was years and years of reading Playboy as a kid (Mom was very progressive) that I credit for developing my aesthetic for the female form. Looking back on older work recently, I noticed how much I haven't drawn women, and I miss it. An old college friend sent me a drawing I did for her and the anatomy was great - something that I would have to think about a bit more now before committing to linework, and definitely just from memory with no references. So I went back into my "Crude" drawing and redid the body, since I wasn't happy with the anatomy at all. I'm happy to find that I can still draw perfect boobs with the... ahem... breast of them!

TLo 2010

Aaand we move on to the Lo part of this duo. My reference photos aren't the best, but half the fun is stylizing things to the point that I like it as a drawing, not just as a portrait likeness. Lotsa work still to go, but quite a bit of progress, considering that I haven't touched the left figure since I started this sketch waaay back in June of 2008!

This is nowhere near finished, but damn, right now it's reminding me of Stephane Manel's work! Ugh, I hope when I put in the final touches that I think will make it more mine, they won't look like I was trying to knock off his style, because I'm definitely not trying to... it's really a variation on comic book painting. But the combination of black linework with the fuller interior coloring is definitely a hallmark of Manel's style. Ugh, I feel like a hack.

In case anyone's wondering, those color bubbles near their faces are hues I sample when painting on their skin, not a design detail. :)

T Minus Lo, Part Next

I'm really liking how this drawing is turning out - it's a nice combination of clean lines and my digital painting techniques. It's a bit more like the artists that I admire, but still with my own line energy. It's a weird aspirational thing to want to draw like other people, even if I do like my own style. But I've always wanted to be clean and spare, like Mucha or Nagel. Must be the comic book aesthetic that I've loved so much for so long.

Anyhow, I took my time with this, but it's one of the few times I really labored over maintaining a technique I'm not doing naturally. It's developing a technique, I suppose. I just hope that when I reduce the lines I don't reduce the enrgy of the piece, which happens more often than not when I overly refine my work...

If you scroll down a few entries, you'll see two initial stages of this drawing to compare where it started and where it's going.

Meeling

A former client of mine to me to dinner the other week at a very private Japanese restaurant (kind of a speakeasy, where you needed to know both the hidden-away place and the owner to gain entry) and in the course of our repast we talked about many things, including Facebook. We both concluded that as much as we realize the pros of social networking, we're both of a generation (and maybe of particular personalities) that values privacy perhaps a tad more than the average social networker in their twenties. So I offered to make her an avatar that her friends would recognize as her, yet would still remain anonymous enough to be private. And this is what I did - reminiscent of Julian Opie, intentionally. Thankfully, she really liked it.

T Minus Lo, Minus Lines

Continuing to work on the banner drawing I promised some former friends lo so many years ago. I wonder if they'll even want it when it's done?

Gaby and his friend Heron

Gaby and his friend Heron listened skeptically while Mike pointed out where he allegedly saw the Yeti.

Mike and his friend Heron

Mike and his friend Heron waited patiently on the landing, confident that these new exterminators would finally put an end to their extended termite nightmare.

Cleaner Unibrow

I was backing up some files to a new hard drive when I came upon an old drawing I did called "unibrow" (for obvious reasons) that I did based on a photo I found in one of the fashion blogs I read. Instead of drawing from scratch, I decided to try and clean it up a little to play with that new style I have in my head. I really need to refine it to the point that it's super spare, but this is definitely an indication of where I would go with the style.

Come to think of it, it's kind of a cleaner version of my avatar here on blogger.

DG02

I'd been revisiting my old mannequin designs via a Flickr group that has me waxing nostalgic about my days in display. My one mannequin collection was based more or less on couture poses that really resembled croquis, as the counterpoint was very pronounced. I pulled many old photos of the collection and did a quick croquis of one of my poses.

T Minus Lo

With this (not really new but new to me and my rendering) style in mind, I thought I'd go back and finally address some old drawings I was supposed to finish years ago. The trick is to get it to a stylized and attractive look while still keeping the essence of the portrait. Working, working...

Croquis Monsieur

I drew way too late last night, and I could barely keep my eyes open. That's what I get for watching so much anime - a crap blog entry!