Kent and his friend Heron waited patiently for what seemed like ages, never imagining that what they thought stood for "water closet" was actually the mountain headquarters of the Wool Council.
Andre and his friend Heron suspect that maybe the dumbbells at the gym were labeled heavier than they actually weighed.
Meanwhile, the guy, Pablo, was equally amazing, with a long lean body and completely defined muscles, but in a way that was still very fluid. He has the kind of body I wish I had (whether as me, or on me... I'm not picky! ;) )
It was one of those nights when I didn't know what to sketch, so I opened up my old Face Time sketch and tried to flesh it out. I didn't get far - coloring a piece always highlights the flaws in the structure (that I would then spend ages trying to fix), flaws that you seldom saw if it was just left as a line drawing.
I finally got my drive backed up last Friday, although a lot of the files are unusable. But I was too exhausted with worrying about the three+ day process to try and fix it, and as a result, I didn't have any energy to sit in front of my Mac and draw either. So I whipped up this quick and sketchy Heron drawing, to see how he would look if I rendered him AS a sketch. Messy.
My Mac was still backing up, so I turned to another page on my sketchbook and whipped out the pencil again. This time I wanted to try drawing an image I would come up with, then shade it as if I were thinking how Stavrinos would do it. It looks like my old comic book work, and I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't brought anything new to my style 20+ years later. Oh well, I suppose that's what practice is for, because I certainly know I do better with my digital drawings than I used to when I started out in 1994, and even as recently as 2003. Certainly this blog has helped m practice, a lot...!
I joined a Yahoo group about the artwork of George Stavrinos, and in one of the posts in the message list was a link to an eBay auction of an original Stavrinos piece from an Estee Lauder ad. While the face wasn't what I loved best about Stavrinos, the shading was. He had such an amazing sense of chiaroscuro, and especially in his ore stylized later work before he died, a great sense of when to leave out full shading, which really highlighted the amazing technique he had for fleshing out faces, fabrics and figures. Inspired by that (as well as looking again at my "Visions" book on his art) I tried channeling him again. I didn't really draw from a model or photo, and as I started flshing out the face, that was my downfall. I really prefer to draw from my own head, because then it's all mine. But I also know Stavrinos used a lot of references (most, I believe, he even took photos of himself), so I thought I'd try and mimic his technique more and see what I could learn. Unfortunately, I don't have his shading down anymore (if I ever did), so while I like the nose, everything else is just a regular pencil drawing in my mind. Enh, I guess it's okay... Still, it was fun to draw in pencil again. I even opened up my drafting table to do so! I really need to do more natural media again.
There are two Herons in this pic but it's shy of a finished sketch. On Monday I started having problems with my last remaining external hard drive (where a lot of my backups resided), so I ended up running diagnostics and backing up the backup to my desktop. That backup too a total of almost 4 days, 24/7. So this was the last digital drawing I did and over the next two days I worked in pencil on actual paper (fancy that!).
I found an old sketch/design of my mom's from a newspaper clipping from a Philippine newspaper, the Manila Bulletin, from April 24, 1974 - just over 36 years ago! It featured two pleated shirtwaist dresses (a favorite of my mom's). I thought I'd reinterpret it for 2010. The sketch itself wasn't by my mom, (whose name, as you may have guessed, was Baby, a very common nickname in the Philippines) but the design was. Mom never really drew full figures, but had illustrators render her quick sketches as fully-illustrated models. She claimed she knew how to draw but I never saw her really do anything but quick scratchy sketches. Anyhow, this one was a favorite of mine, as I loved the hairdo back when I was 9, and I tried desperately to recreate it and draw it in my own sketches (I still have the original attempts too - such a little queen). I think this one was by her illustrator Sony (sp), who was one of two who drew for mom, and whose style I didn't love as much as mom's other illustrator Trining. I later did my mom's sketches for her when I was in my late teens and early twenties, as did my friend Joanne.
This is just the inital sketch, but I'm not sold on my redesign just yet so, I'll definitely be retooling it over the next few days.
Kitty and her friend Heron seemed undaunted by the extreme lack of taxi cabs.
OMG, I think I'm actually done! Amazing what a day home sick will allow you to do, when you're trapped convalescing.
I think it's done.
You can never tell, sometimes, what people mean when they message you online. SO much nuance is lost despite having all the emoticons and smilies to add emotion where none seem to exist. Yet you still can have misunderstandings. And while the online emotions can be misconstrued, the offline ones are as real as usual...
My friend Greg and I watched that wannabe Harry Potter movie, " Percy Jackson and The Olympians" tonight since we thought it might be mindless entertainment... and it was, minus the full entertainment part. It was only mildly entertaining, broadcasting its plot points a mile away. But the special effects were suitably Hollywood, and I did like the scene where Jackson displays his birthright amidst a rooftop of water towers... not that you didn't see nearly the entire scene already in the trailers. Still, it made for a memorable visual. I particularly liked the lead actor's stance in that scene. Very comic book. So I drew it.
Why is this reminding of some old Neal Adams artwork from the 70s? I feel like it's his way of coloring.
Trying desperately to finish at least three new of these CS portraits for the book I'm trying to be published in. I don't even know if the finished ones will make it since my style has changed in 7 years, but I'm trying my best to make it to the July 4th deadline!
Christina and her friend Heron rebel against authority.
