This week I went through a drawing burst. I made nine new working drawings on six by nine inch sheets of paper. They’re all about the same size but don’t all have the same proportions. I was at a creative standstill and couldn’t get anything done. I had some things already started that I could work on if I had wanted to but none of them interested me. So I decided to start over. I grabbed one of my ink books that has all of my marker drawings in them and found a few small drawings that interested me. I took these three small drawings, blew them up on the computer and printed them out on some six by nine inch Bristol board. I repeated this over three days.
The first drawing is named “Empty World.” It’s a figure drawing but the figure isn’t near the realm of realism. The woman has an impossibly long neck and some teacup hips. That’s what I call those super-curved hips that look like an upside down teacup. And what’s that on her head? It could be hair or it could be a hat. Either way it has lots of stripes for putting color in. This one is sufficiently dreamy enough to become one of my dream-like faux comic book covers.
The second drawing is named “Trivial Agency.” We have a lot of symmetry going on here. It’s almost perfectly symmetrical except for the eyebrows. I like symmetry but also like things to stop short of perfect symmetry. I can see this one being a large black and white marker drawing. It has good shapes that I can add black too. I think it’ll look best at a large size.
The third drawing is named “Brow Line.” This one has a lot of negative space in it. The whole thing revolves around the sky in the background. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do with it since so much of it would depend on color. I may even have to add some more elements to it in the color phase. This might be the most “Unfinished” of the drawings.
The fourth drawing is named “Deployed Bits.” This one is a face without a face. That’s unusual for me. It also has a lot of symmetry. I keep wanting to see a face where there is no face. It’s a bit confusing. I like the composition of this one but it really needs color to give it clarity. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it but it would look best as some sort of painting.
The fifth drawing is named “Act of Wraith.” Alright, what the hell is going on in this one? I’m not really sure. I remember thinking that about the thumbnail drawings of it too but I liked the shapes and general composition of it. The two one eyed creatures on the bottom are a mystery but the top is even more so. It looks like a head with some sad eyes but it could also be the sun. The repeated oval shape could be a halo for a person or a halo for the sun. I lean towards a person but the shapes are so simplified that I could be wrong. This one cries out for color too.
The sixth drawing is named “Fair Brains.” This one I can see as one of my large ink drawings. Twenty by thirty inches. We’ve got two faces and a body. One face is the body. I’m not sure exactly how I’d work out all the shapes as a large black and white drawing though. That would take some time. I’d need to find places to put patterns and such. I’m sure I could work it out but this one is far from finished.
The seventh drawing is named “Lost Banana.” Except for the background sky this one has everything there. Lots of shapes and pattern plus a big face. The neck area is odd. It might need rethinking. Or maybe not. It could be that it’s not a neck solution that I used to. The more I look at it the more it looks okay. The rest of it is settled.
The eight drawing is named “Stop Now.” I could go in a color or black and white direction with this one. I can see it as a faux cover or as a big black and white drawing. All the shapes and patterns are thoroughly worked out. I think it’s easier to work everything out if the drawing has a big head in it. No matter how weird I make the head it still acts as an anchor of the expected. We all know and expect to see faces. I can distort them a whole lot and they’ll still read a faces. That helps.
The ninth drawing is named “Soul Hero.” One more big face in this last one and it’s the most realistic face in this series of drawings. It even looks a bit odd. All this weird stuff around a semi-realistic face makes me wonder what is going on? Are all those shapes a look into her mind? A look into her dreams? Just the mention of the word “Dream” makes me think this will make a good “Dreams if Things” faux comic book cover.
Nine drawings. All in pencil on six by nine inch Bristol board one blue line. It took me a while to get them all done. They vary in the time it takes to draw them but if I had to pick an average I’d say they each took a couple of hours a piece. The symmetrical ones usually take the longest because they don’t always start out symmetrical. I usually decide part way through that I want them to be symmetrical and that means figuring out which half I like, or taking pieces for each half, and then duplicating the half on the other side. I use tracing paper and graphite to do that so it’s not hard but I have to pay attention. Nothing worse than asymmetrical symmetry when that’s not what I’m aiming for.
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