Category Archives: Cartoon

Take your imagination for a walk.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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83_Wheelie_2

There aren’t many drawings here in my collection that are based fairly and squarely on actual, real machines. The bike in the picture today is probably as close as I’ve got in some time to depicting an actual bike. On the one hand this is down to the fact that I find “copying” from reference material a rather dull activity, and on the other it has a lot to do with keeping my imagination fed, watered and happy. Those of us who enjoy documenting the wonderful world around us through image making most likely occupy an area similar to that found between the two intersecting circles of a Venn diagram, where the real and imaginary overlap, and each image is a result of varying percentage combinations of the contents of those two circles. For me the ratio feels very much tipped in favour of imagination but, sometimes I wonder whether this is actually the case. What is my imagination up to during the process of making an image such as this one above? Is it actually creating anything or is it busy bending a set of reality based frameworks, and blending those with a healthy dose of embedded knowledge to create something which my  eye is happy with? I’m not sure, but it’s an interesting question all the same.

 

Generally speaking, an active imagination is a happy one, and though we all know that this isn’t always the case, learning to feed it with good stuff is an important life lesson. The pleasure though, in this activity, is that it seemingly has no problem propelling itself along at a fair old clip when it’s found something to get its teeth into, and for me this is where reality plays it’s biggest role, in influencing the choices my imagination makes and providing the fuel for the journey. This is one of the key reasons why these pictures come out the way they do. My imagination needs not only to bear creative fruit but also has to have something to distort, to have fun with in order to function properly. It’s a strong urge and one I’m almost powerless to resist, so most of the time I don’t try to. But there is some control involved somewhere as it doesn’t just run wild all the time. Perhaps it is like a kind of dog, look after it, feed it properly and give it regular exercise and it stays a loyal and rewarding companion.

 

Bending the rules, just a little.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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82_Wheelie_1

Todays stunt, the Wheelie. As much as they are displays of machine control and skill, they are also a perfect expression of the utterly boyish exuberance and confidence that infects us when we’re out on our bikes. It’s a lot of fun to depict them in images, though capturing that moment, like a camera snapshot, presents its own challenges. If you drew up some kind of list of all the variables one could consider before putting pen to paper, you would probably never start. For me the essence lies in capturing that sense of fun and confidence such a display gives off. It is after all, nothing more than showing off to an audience, so trying to get that into the picture is important. It would be far simpler to draw the whole thing as a straight elevational view but that would be too easy. Like a camera lens your eye can be a pretty wide angle device, and so creating a sense of depth and perspective is the main challenge. Which part of the image is almost flat to the viewer, and at what angle does one see the rest of the subject are aspects that present an interesting challenge when drawing from imagination. Too little and things look rather flat, too much and you get a kind of fish eye effect that turns the subject into a kind of banana. In perspective terms these are not perfect depictions but I hope they do enough to convey the idea. Cartoons invariably bend the rules a bit, but I think you can get away with it when you admit that that is exactly what you’re creating.

 

This one is Wheelie 1, and yes, that means there is another one coming along shortly. I hope you enjoyed it.

 

A new picture and an inspiring book.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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81_FlyBy_2

This is the second version of FlyBy. There wasn’t anything wrong with the first one, it just seemed like a good idea to do another one, and bring in some more of the classic cafe racer details like a black leather jacket with patches on and a big silver tank on the bike.

 

The background got really patchy on this one but once it had dried out fully it didn’t seem too bad after all. The colour works really well with the bike image and it would have been foolhardy to think that it could be rescued or changed in any way by adding more liquid. I’m really pleased with the reflections on the exhaust and the engine side cover, I confess I referred to some photographs to truly try and get a handle on these parts. There is certainly a “way” of doing these things, and it is reliant on being able to pick the information  you want from a photo as it is in being able to access ones embedded knowledge. The former certainly feeds the latter, the photos serving purely to inform what I’m doing rather than be representative of the only way things can be rendered. More of these to come.

This is a great book.

This is a great book.

On another note today, here’s a really great book to recommend. It’s called “An Illustrated Life” by a chap called Danny Gregory. Essentially it is a collection of features on various creative people and their sketchbooks, including he author, though the books are very much the heroes. It is a fascinating look into other worlds where the books are used as journals for recording everyday life, through to how various artists use them as repositories for ideas and laboratories for creative experimentation. To accompany all of this visual candy there is also plenty to read, each featured person is given plenty of column inches to explain what they use their books for, how they do it and, just as importantly, why they do what they do. It is all very enlightening and interesting stuff, I can’t recommend it enough as a source of energy, inspiration and delight. For any of us who spend any time slowly filling sketchbooks all this might at first seem a bit intimidating, but go with it and it soon becomes clear that we are all doing the same thing, just differently and individually. It’s readily available through all the usual channels. Here’s a link: To the book.

Illustrated_Life2 Illustrated_Life3 Illustrated_Life4