Sketches from Illustration

These are some pen sketches I did in Illustration and Illustration Style.





And this, which is for 3 Cups of Tea, a book that reads like an early 20th Century adventure novel. It's about a guy who goes climbing in Afghanistan and winds up wanting to build schools for the poor people living there. I don't think this came out too awesome, though the girl looks like a cross between a purple ninja and a Medieval Virgin Mary.

Exhibited

Top left. That's Pippi!

Design I Assignments

This was my first project for Design I. We had to use stipling, which I despise, so I picked a high contrast image with lots of black and white. It was traced from a photo in Natural History, a magazine I loved to read as a child. Stephen Jay Gould wrote monthly essays for 'em. The original had 2 more birds in the middle, which I removed for clarification.


This was my second project, based on a sketch I did of my housemate, Pippi. The assignment was "line". My teacher insisted I do the contour drawing, although I had second thoughts about it and wanted to work on the below project instead.


This is still in progress. The trees are from a photo I took of Battery Park; the rabbit is from Teniel's illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I had wanted to do this one instead of the contour drawing because I like creating textures and shading with line, and also the Pippi drawing just seemed too easy and simple.

Crocheting from Life

This is also Pippi. She is crocheting a critter. I drew her face using the "don't look at the paper" method, and it worked. Then I tried to draw her hands and the wrinkles on her fleece using the "obsess over every detail" method, and it didn't work so well.



Some practice for the top drawing. I like hands, and trying to draw them while she was crocheting was a challenge. I exaggerated too much. Wrinkles are worse, but I think I did ok and am even surprised by how well I captured the form of her leg underneath the clothing. You can see an earlier drawing I did of the wrinkles in pants here.

As you can see, I did the first drawing on the back of the second. I once showed a teacher from Snug Harbor my sketchbook, and she told me not to draw on the backs of pages in case I want to display a drawing by itself. Well, I listened to her for a while, but then I decided I never display my drawings like that, I just scan them. But it looks like it's still a good idea, since the paper in this book is so thin, having drawings on both pages doesn't scan well.

Pippi and Poster

This guy's name is Avi, I think. He is sitting in an alley, but I am too lazy to draw in the brick wall. I did a lot of underdrawing and erasing for this one. First I sketched out some ideas of him sitting in a box, looking up at the poster. Then I decided it was too hard, and decided on a triangular shape for his sitting position, with his nose pointing at the poster to get your eye to follow. This guy's face is hard to draw because his bushy eyebrows tend to get mixed up into his messy hair. I need to remind myself that people tend to have foreheads.




This is Pippi. She probably looks nothing like this.

Beer Bear's Friends

Rent

My MSPAINT comix are drawn nicer than this

A little thumbnail comic, just to get me into practice.

This morning I woke up early to go over to my friend's house, where I've been keeping my bike. I'm learning how to ride and I don't know much of anything about bikes, so I've been keeping it over there where I can get help and advice.

Text of panel 6: "Oh you're up early." "Ah jeez, the cat puked all over."

And he did. The little bastard.

Hmm...newspapers, bums, and dreadlocks...

No particular theme that day.

I tried drawing the newspapers and shirt on the living room table, but I got really frustrated and started drawing bums. Those folds are God damn complicated!

Gano is a real graffiti artist out here. I admire his work. He usually does nicer tags than my crappy brick wall thing, but I didn't want to sketch in anything fancy. I just wanted to draw a tag, and he immediately came to mind.

The little monster and the DORK tag are also based on graffiti I've seen out here.

Pippi was fussing with her hair Monday afternoon. She looked very peaceful.

Draw realistically day

Screwed up her chin. I nailed the eyes and nose though. Score!


That table's geometry is not of this plane.


Fuck you, chair.


Everything here is a little wrong, so I can pretend I was going for a style.


Somebody pointed out to me that this table isn't perspectiveless so much as proportionless.