Grab bag

Late nite pen and ink has been the name of the game recently. I finally settled into the upstairs of a duplex and set up shop. Thanks to kind friends I have tons of desk space for both illustrating and animating. The pages in my sketchbook are filling by the day, sometimes labored and other times more easily.

My main focus as I pieced together my apartment and tried to find work was larger pen and ink drawings. The original idea was to use lyrics that practically begged me to think of something to draw for them and draw it. While taken completely out of context and influenced by Bernie Wrightson's work on Frankenstein, I used "the wind and the willows play tea for two" for this one:


One of the drawings I'm working on now (shown at the top of the post), however, was not influenced by any lyric but only an awesome photo of a friend's baby. Hopefully I'll get the lighting right.

I've been pushing to fill up my sketchbook quickly. And although I haven't been close to meeting my ambitious deadlines, the book has been good so far (to me). One effort made is to draw more of what I see, which many people agree to as being an essential skill; a difficult but essential skill. I've also been tightening my loose grasp on perspective drawing. In the case below I didn't concern myself with staff and customers around the register.


I even got in some landscapes while in-between climbs in Utah this fall, drawn with a trusty, tried and true Bic pen. If anyone as ever been to Indian Creek, these were drawn while sitting at Middle Crack (5.12), at Reservoir Wall.


Another focus has been drawing/coming up with characters, and drawing them as reproducibly as possible in different poses and gestures. Exact reproduction is lacking, but on my radar.


Here are some atypical characters. (Atypical in the sense that I usually draw bald men).



Here's a fun one from the notebook.


However, I have animation on the mind. This is an adventure a little more intimidating to begin and therefore easier to delay. Luckily I have the space and basic equipment necessary to commence production when I can wrap my mind around the project. My first landmark is getting out the first 5 seconds in the form of a pencil test. Once I start and obsess and animation becomes a compulsion that demands insomnia, 5 seconds will become 10 and then after many lost hours of sleep my 10 seconds all of a sudden become minutes, I anticipate that I'll have a decent second effort (first effort). I just need to start.

Anyway, here are some random pictures to finish up my road trip. First off, the rainy Olympic Mountains and the Queets River.






Orcas Island:


Failed attempt on Enchantment Peak:


Indian Creek: