Waffle

Drawing that just popped up in my head the other day, after talking to Aggie about the economic crisis. Of course, after the drawing pops up in one’s head, one has to do the hard work of drawing it - including research for things like wheelbarrows full of money.

When I googled for “Wheelbarrow full of money”, I noticed something interesting. I expected to get only images of the German hyperinflation of 1923, but instead got a whole bunch of stock photos and illustrations showing succesful, wealthy, smiling people pushing wheelbarrows full of cash. I guess because the US has never experienced hyperinflation (yet), they associate wheelbarrows full of cash with wealth rather than with the collapse of a financial system resulting in poverty for large sections of the population. I have never personally experienced hyperinflation (yet) but to me as a somewhat historically educated European, the image of a wheelbarrow full of cash is not a happy one. Thinking about this has made me want to do more art relating to money, the lack or oversupply of it, and the different cultural assumptions and constructs surrounding it. There’ll be more nekkid people in it, either to sugarcoat the theme, or because they’ve just lost their shirts.

Update: This drawing is now for sale through my Comicspace galleries. You will need to sign up with Comicspace to be able to see it (to certify that you are old enough to look at nipples) but the process is easy and does not result in you getting spammed. If you don’t want to buy it that way, though, you can also e-mail me and buy from me directly. Price is set at $100 - not exactly a bucketload of money.

I have also made it available as a Print via DeviantArt, in a range of formats and at the default prices. There, too, you’ll have to sign up to view and order.

Diary of a Process junkie is the life/art blog of Alberto Ruiz, and has lots of lovely writing and reference material for artists, such as exhaustive lists of classic anatomy books, plus links to digital versions of same. Me like, me download. I especially like the many peeks into the books Ruiz publishes himself through his company, Brandstudio Press. Very geared towards cartoony pin-up type art, but all the artists involve can draw like mo-fos. Spend a couple of hours reading what Ruiz has to say about drawing and downloading the resources. (Via)

The Double and Alcydia artist Daniel Østvold has updated his Kunst.no pages (in Norwegian) with some pictures of recent fine art projects and a preview of the sequel to Alcydia, Kidnapped Princesses.

Daniel works fast when he has the opportunity to, but he usually has several things on the boil at any time, so it’s nice to see that he has been working on a new comics project. As usual, the script is by Geir. I have no further details than what it says on the pages, which is basically that Countess Alcydia has been settling into a new line of business, kidnapping prinsesses for fun and profit. I hope we’ll be able to run it on the Chronicles of the Witch Queen web site late this year.

I promised a few people to show them sketches from the sketching trip to Emmen zoo that I took with some of the guys from Gr’nn. Unfortunately, I’m not all that happy with how the sketches turned out; it’s hard to be satisfied when you’re in the company of four others who kick your ass at drawing from observation, and even the good sketches came out very light and hesitant.
I’ll post two, though.

I thought these Kodiak Bears, lounging at the top of an artificial waterfall in their enclosure, looked bored and unhappy. Then again, these bears have face masks that seem to droop a bit anyway. There was a third bear that showed signs of neurotic behaviour, pacing around separately from the other two.
The view in the bear enclosure isn’t too good; you can only really get a good look at the bears when they’re in that waterfall spot. This turned out to be a blessing, because that one spot makes a very pretty picture. I tried to capture some of those surroundings, which made for a nicer sketch in the end.

Most animals make terrible models. I did several pages worth of sketches of meerkats that were ruined by the little buggers’ inability to sit still. The others, particularly Erik Wielaart, did well in spite of the lack of cooperation from the animals; it’s a matter of drawing what you can and then waiting for the animal to return to the position you were drawing them in, which they often do. I guess I’ll have to develop a knack for this.
This juvenile giraffe, on the other hand, sat perfectly still for the better part of an hour, allowing me to make several drawings of it from various angles. This one is the best of mine.
Giraffes are actually very interesting to draw. I had prepared myself by looking at Mithandir’s safari pictures beforehand, so I had some idea what the shape and the mechanics of a giraffe’s head were like (even though the ones in Mithandir’s pics are a different species), which helped a lot. Still, I was surprised to find myself spending so much time on drawing them because I’m not normally interested in charismatic megafauna. I think trying to draw made them less familiar and brought home just how strange these animals actually are.

I will be doing this again. Like life drawing, I expect to get better at it with practice. For now, though, you’ll be spared my sketches of meerkats, prairie dogs, gnus, porcupines, sharks, sturgeons, geckos and various unidentified fish. I also apologise for not drawing any cephalopods; the zoo didn’t have any.

First, a cover drawing for a forthcoming ebook:

The e-book version of Guðrún will be launched real soon now. Headsmen (link goes directly to downloadable file) was downloaded more than 900 times, so there are clearly plenty of people who want Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan ebooks. As with Headsmen, the e-book will be a stepping-stone towards a print book, but some raising of funds will also be involved in its publication.

I spent yesterday evening at the monthly sketching party at Erik Wielaart’s. Most of the sketches came out fairly raw and low-contrast, so I’ve had to adjust them to the hilt and keep most of them small. Pictures below may or may not enlarge if you click on them.

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Yesterday afternoon, I met with my friends Kim, Danny and Steve in the pub to quickly celebrate Kim’s birthday before she had to go back to Plauen in eastern Germany. That was at five o’clock. Three hours, three Belgian beers and a quick meal later, I had a life drawing session with the VOIC.
So, how unsteady was my hand? I won’t claim that the life drawings below are my best ever, but they’re not nearly my worst either. I sat down at a table for the first time since I started taking part in those sessions (I normally prefer to either sit with the sketchbook in my hands, or stand at an easel). That helped, and what also helped was that the model was very good at sitting still. So was her identical twin. The pink elephant, on the other hand, was a constant nuisance.

For the first few drawings, the model kept her wraparound towel on, so I tried to work on draperies and feet. There’s a girl in the class I teach who can draw feet amazingly well, so I need to improve to keep up with my student.

Nice hands. Terrible legs.

Cartoonish face, proportions all wrong. Must have been that pink elephant trumpeting in my ears.

I had to cheat a bit with this one. When I was drawing this one, I liked how the abstract, minimalist painting in the background framed her skin and hair against a square red area. However, I didn’t have any colour tools on me so I tried, and failed, to replicated the effect with my grey pencils. That wasn’t the same because the red square was the same brightness as the hair, causing the hair to disappear. Photoshop to the rescue… this is actually a good approximation of what it would have looked like if I’d had my colour pencils with me.

This one turned out all right in the end, though as I was working on it, I had no idea how to make the way the model’s body was turned unambiguously clear. Older, fatter models usually have some folds that can be used to indicate how the twist works, but this model lacked them. In the end, I don’t think it was necessary to emphasize the mechanics. She’s turned. This was how it looked.

Having been a member of the Vera Artdivision for some five years now, I am a tad prejudiced; but over on Gigposters.com two posters by fellow Artdivision members made “Poster of the Week.” A nice bit of recognition for our hard work.

Mara Piccione’s weird but awesome Ghettoways poster. This week it’s Reinder’s ex-studiomate Sidsel Genee’s turn in the spotlights. Kudos!

Drawn points me to the Temple of the Seven Camels blog by Carson Van OstenMark Kennedy, which really is excellent. So, of course, are many things posted on Drawn, but this one caught my attention because it’s actually telling me how to deal with problems that were bugging me while drawing yesterday.

The Lazy Grind has had an excellent effect on my motivation and productivity, but in the last two pages I drew I was beginning to find some rushedness creeping in. This shows not so much in declining ink quality (because my inks are always sloppy and take a lot of time to fix anyway) as in a slackness of design, especially the design of background characters. Following Van OstenKennedy’s tips on proportion and asymmetry will help me create those extras fast without costing me that much more time.

Update: Misattribution corrected.

The new home page for the Tour de France website has a design that, by itself, isn’t particularly disturbing. Nevertheless, it will disturb some, because they’ll be reminded of something disturbing.

There are certain things that, when you’ve seen them, you can never un-see again. (Cropped screenshot below the cut)

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The Animation Archive has some lovely samples of a Famous Artists cartooning coursebook showing how sports cartoonist Willard Mullin drew animals. It’s lovely lovely stuff, inspiring and educational. I like it extra because it will help me settle a long-standing argument with studio-mate E. in my favour: Mullin names the joints of an animal according to their structural correspondence with human joints, not their functional ones (otherwise what Mullin calls the wrist would be called a knee). That’ll teach E. to look at me funny when I try to describe animal parts.