I’ve written a little bit about the scary face drawings that I make once before but lately I’ve been making them a little differently. Previously I had been making them on six by nine inch smooth bristol board with pencil, ink, and colored marker. I wouldn’t pencil them out very much but I did give myself some rough guidelines to ink over. They were fun and I liked them but my making videos of me drawing has changed my monster face drawings too.
The videos that I’ve been making have all been of five by seven inch drawings. That seems to be the largest size I can draw at and still capture nearly the whole drawing on camera. I had been doing those drawings with various markers on smooth bristol board when I decided I wanted to make a scary face drawing and capture it on video. Since the videos were of short spontaneous drawings I wouldn’t be doing any penciling and would go straight to brush and ink. This also let me pick the “On the Rough” five by seven inch watercolor paper that I’ve been using for other ink and color watercolor drawings. I hadn’t been using that paper for scary face drawing before. I ended up really liking that paper for this purpose.
First off the paper is really really rough. Maybe even add another “Really”. I’ve found it impossible to draw on with anything but a brush. It takes pencil terribly so don’t even bother. Pen is even worse. But if you’re going for a messy ink look it’s good stuff. I even use one of my old worn out brushes. Most comic book inkers who use a brush uses a sable watercolor brush and that’s what I use too. Normally a good sable brush used with watercolors will last years and years but India ink destroys the bristles somehow. Or the glue that holds the bristles in. I forget which. Either way after anywhere from a few months to a few years use the tip of the brush stops holding together. Instead of the brush coming to a point it comes to a few points. Usually that’s when you’d throw the brush out but that’s also when it becomes good for making scary monster faces.
The first drawing I did is called “Fright Face”. I guess I went literal with the name because it was for a video. That was a new process for me and messed with my normal way of naming things by pulling unrelated names out of my head. With this one you can see one of the main characteristics of these scary face drawings. An open mouth with a lot of sharp teeth. The eyes are very deep on this one and the teeth are jagged and disorganized. I think I tried to put horns on the monster’s forehead but abandoned the idea and all but obliterated them. You can see how the brush tip splits into a few parallel lines as I use it. I do a lot of scrubbing with the brush too. This is nothing I’d normally do with a sable brush but it was wrecked anyway.
The second monster face drawing is called “Stick-a-link”. Now I’m back to my odd names. This one pushes the head up to the top of the page cutting off most of the top of the head so I gave him some horns on his chin. He also has nice, sharp, and almost symmetrical teeth. There is a whole lot of brush scrubbing on this one as the face nearly fades into the black of the background. I like the glossy black Sennelier ink for this task. It has a good presence that goes well with the white of the paper. And this paper is really white. It looks like a bright artificial white. A monstrous white that is not of this Earth. Makes for a nice monster face.
The third drawing is called “Dreamy Dude”. I just might like this one best. I dropped the face down on this one to give myself some room to draw horns or some such but that didn’t work out and they morphed into a second row of eyes. I like those eyes. They give the drawing an otherworldly totem pole feel. The face is also wider and has more substance than the last one so it makes for a different type of monster. I like to strive for variety. The many parallel lines from the brush strokes in this one also gives it a wooden totem pole feel. Though this one might be more creepy than scary.
The fourth drawing is one that I made a video for and told a story as I drew it. Turns out that’s a hard thing to do. I was making up the drawing as I went along as well as making up the story. Unwritten, unrehearsed, and unpracticed. It took a lot more concentration than I would have suspected. And a weird type of shifting concentration. From the drawing to the story and then back and forth between them. Quickly. As a result I think the drawing is a little more disjointed than the other three. I like that quality about it though. The lines aren’t so parallel anymore. Except for in a Y pattern starting in the middle of his forehead and extending down the bridge of his nose and onto his forehead in what might be horns. I think that’s what they started out as but not what they ended up being. This face is in a flatter plane of space and his features disappear in little bits and pieces rather than all at once into the background. Telling a story at the same time affected how I made this drawing.
So there you have four new recent drawings and two recent videos that are variations on one of my usual subjects. I must say that I like doing scary face drawings on this paper a lot. The paper is so white that one of my friends thought I was using white paint as well as black ink but I wasn’t. The white shines and the black disappears.
Discussion ¬