Saturday, March 21, 2009

Post 308=Live Art Heroes4Heroes style

Heroes4Heroes
March 21, 2009
Poor David's Pub
1313 South Lamar St., Dallas, Texas 75215
7:00pm - 11:00pm
$5 at the door (parking not included)
Saturday, March 21st at Poor David's Pub will be a Heroes4Heroes live art|music show. H4H and ArtLoveMagic will be hosting a great night of live art and music. Artists will have original art and prints for sale at the show. Featured artists will be Mitch Breitweiser (Captain America, Hulk, Fantastic Four) and Eric ‘Ebas’ Basaldua (Witchblade/Devi, Darkness, Tomb Raider). Space-Gun Studios will be there kicking it live as usual and we'll have prints and original art for sale as well. Come check out the show and give support to our troops overseas.

Post 307


Got a new sketchbook on sale yesterday, one of those travel ones with the journalist treatment that flips open in lengthwise. It's fun stuff, nice paper for pencil drawing. Not amazing for inks, but again, fantastic on pencils. Might be able to take a light wash, but it'll be nice for sketching ideas.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Post 306


More experimentation, and yet, it took less time than ever before. This week has been great, I've had the time to get a lot of work done, and still learn a lot more to refine my style.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Post 305



Further corrections made to my hand positioning using a pencil. I took a cue from working more with chopsticks. While splitting a meal of sushi at the Korean place next to the convention center for Staple, I bobbled my way through using chopsticks. Then, when I went to my big brother and sister in law's anniversary dinner I watched the people in the restaurant, who used a completely different technique than I had seen before. So I made adjustments, and the outcome was 10000-fold improved.

My point is that you may be used to using a certain style of holding the pencil, but what is known may not be what is comfortable for your skill level. Looking back, one of the major hindrances to my getting drawings to look the way they were in my head was because of how I held a pencil. As I've mentioned before, I fought off my 2nd and 3rd grade teachers and their ridiculous rubber pencil grip-guides. This also may have led to what appeared to be the onset of tendonitis my senior year of high school (you need to see some of my portfolio from back then, easily 1000's of lines on just a section of each drawing), but I have been careful to watch out for my wrists, thus the search for a better grip began. It's an art in itself. People don't pay attention to it, and I can't stress enough how much it changes the outcome of a line.

If you've seen Erik Larsen draw, you can definitely see the large variety of ways to hold the pencil!

Depending on what kind of a day I'm having, I find it easier to get the hold I need, and sometimes it's insanely tough (days that I work out, rainy days) like when my arm muscles are strained. So I've been working on different ways to hold for specific types of days.

This may seem crazy, or too much effort spent on something trivial, but I've found that my production level has jumped up a lot! With less frustration I don't leave as many drawings unfinished, and I'm able to work for longer periods of time. Part of that too goes to a better style of living that I've been working on. As a comic artist, more than many other professions, you wouldn't believe how important it is to take care of your body. I'm creeping back from a really horrible level of inactivity and into a very active day to day life. It's actually helped with my art in a lot of ways from general confidence to ability to produce. My arm can sustain a greater range of movement and achieve better line variation. I can actually paint again without my back getting sore and having to hunch all the time.

Everything works together, and ultimately improves your work. Art is life, life is art, there's a sense of equilibrium necessary for everything to work together, and no one part is independent.

These are the little things we take for granted, and ultimately the things that can lead to many issues. I also stress if at all possible, regular trips to the doctor, it's something that I hated for so long, but I'm so glad that I keep up with it. There are so many artists that didn't have insurance and let things slip by that have passed away far too early from treatable ailments.

Done preaching, go ahead and check out the sketch!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Post 304=Bonus Post

I'm feeling a little generous, so you get a second post for today. Got a clean bill of health and ACTUAL approval from the doctor (a rare and treasured thing), found a pen that Kody Chamberlain had mentioned a while back that is super rare at my old campus bookstore, finally made it up to Ruby's Diner for some awesome eats, and on my way out got whistled at by some college girls in Spring Break mode...it was nice! ;)

Post 303


Just trying something different, this took me only a couple minutes to color with a different technique. Speed colorin'!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Post 302


I'm very particular about the lines I want to get, and yesterday I found a pretty good way of getting the right hand position to achieve those lines.

I'm excited because I'm going up to Denton today, so I'll get to stop by Voertmann's (college bookstore/awesome art store) to check out the latest art goodies, and go eat lunch at Ruby's Diner, one of my favorite places as of recent times. Then the rest of the day I'll work on finishing some pages and inking. So much to do, so little time...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Post 301



I like to memorize poses and things I see in the everyday world, it's how I remember poses. I started doing this in college to create a memory bank of poses and situations for drawing. I really liked this one and I'm glad I remembered it. The top version I was just playing around a bit, and had fun with the crazy result.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Post 300!!!!!



Two-for-one post for post 300! It's crazy, never thought I'd make it to this many posts, as nearly every other blog I've had never lasted very long at all. So here's to 300 more!