Yesterday was another day of getting small things done. It seems that has been the theme of this February. Well, I did get some big things done in the form of my large ink drawings but I’ve also had days where all I could manage was bits and pieces. Life is like that sometimes.
One thing I got done was a handful of art cards. Those are 2.5×3.5 inch drawings or paintings. That’s baseball card size. Art cards generally break down into four categories for me. The first is cartoon art cards. These are the ones of talking heads that I make for my “Drifting and Dreaming” strip. I didn’t make any of these this week. The second category is smaller versions of my larger drawings. That’s when I take an already existing drawing and scale it down to art card size to see if I can make it work that small. I didn’t make any of these type either. The third type is spontaneous ink drawings. That’s where I work directly in ink so there in no erasing possible. I started a couple of these but as I’m writing this I haven’t finished them just yet.
The fourth category of art card is the one I was working in. I’d make a little pencil drawing, ink it with a sign pen, and then color it with my Copic markers. I don’t draw much in pencil these days as a first step. Usually I draw in ink, then pencil, then ink again. For some reason I think better in ink. I don’t worry about erasing and making things perfect when I draw in ink at the beginning. Trying to make something “Perfect” should be later on in the process. So I had to get used to drawing in pencil as a first step and not get caught up in too much erasing.
The cards I made sum up a few of the genres I work in. The first is Art Card 1032. A man’s face made with simple lines. Triangle mouth, big black dots for eyes, a strange swooping nose, and some sort of weird hat or hair. These are the elements I rearrange and play with all the time for small faces. The marker I use, a sign pen refilled with India ink, is perfect for this type of even lined drawing. Unlike a brush drawing where I’m making thick to thin lines and lots of different marks the sign pen makes just a couple of marks and I like that simplicity. The background is slightly abstract but the colors are straight forward with a little shading in them.
The second drawing is Art Card 1033. A small figure drawing. This is a good example of me using triangles to draw figures. The two obvious triangles are the one from her shoulders to her waist and the one that makes up the bottom of her dress. But her arms and legs are also elongated triangles. Her hands are a couple of little triangles too as well as her hair being a big triangle. For whatever reason I often think in triangles. It’s tough to get my thick lined sign pen to make such small lines so things like her face and feet get a little clumsy. But it’s just a little art cards so I try not to sweat it too much. I like the color on this one with the bright orange in the background and the ground being blue. Not my favorite card but it’ll do.
The third card is one of my robots. Art card 1034. I like to draw robots. My robots have nothing to do with technology though. They have to do with line and shape. They’re modern art robots as much as anything. They give me a chance to draw human type figures without it having to look totally human. I mostly color them grey or some light color as I have here but I also use splashes of color like his red swirly eye. Or the blue cupcake like thing on his chest. The background is simple as they often are on these cards but I kept this one fairly normal to ground the image a little. I used a blue sky and some green grass. Sure there is some purple in there to make things sparkle but overall I think the background helps keep things real.
Art card 1035 is one of my masked figures. I like drawing faces and I like drawing masked faces. Not only are they mysterious but though the masks are still faces the rules of drawing faces can be exaggerated or even broken. Here I did a little exaggeration. She also has my simplified rounded cartoon bosoms. I mostly use them along with sharp angles in the shoulders and waist to get some contrast going. I like the green dress here but the purple mask starts to blend with the blue sky. There is nothing wrong with that but it was unintentional on my part and sometimes things bother me if I didn’t plan them even if they work. I’m more comfortable controlling the space rather than having it thrust upon me. But, oh well, it’s okay to let go.
The final card, Art Card 1036, has got another woman in it but this time with an angled bosom. It’s less cartoony than my rounded one but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was realistic. It’s more of my drawing of triangles coming into play. Each breast started out as a triangle and in some of my drawings they stay that way but here they got connected. That’s because it’s an upshot. For some reason I decided to go with the unflattering under the chin angle for her face and her chest followed. I like the lines of her face in this one. I think I managed to capture a bit of awkwardness with simplicity. I also like the way the red and blue work together. The blue at the bottom is a Tahitian blue (B04) Copic marker that my favorite blue. I seem to always like it.
So those are the simple drawings that I got done this week. I think they ended up being a pretty good cross section of the types of drawings that I commonly do.
Discussion ¬