Category Archives: Ink

Variety, part 1.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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“Do you draw anything other than bikey stuff?”

It’s an often asked question and the answer is, yes I do. Currently the focus is very much on the bike stuff but, there is increasing feeling that a bit of diversity wouldn’t go amiss every now and then. Looking back through the admittedly rather scant archive here serves as a constant reminder that other subjects do indeed come under the Soulcraftcandy spotlight every so often.

Admittedly it’s not very frequently but, now and again I am asked to do a small commission, or an upcoming event such as a birthday prompts the creation of something different. Providing there is enough time to get things done, including coming up with the right idea, doing small commissions and gifts can be a lot of fun and very rewarding. Not being a pro artist or illustrator means that engaging in these things is less pressured and remains fun.

Peoples reactions to them are often very positive and complimentary. If you are lucky enough and they are giving you some money in exchange for your labours, then usually this more than compensates for the ocassional hour or two you’ve spent burning the midnight oil to get it done in time. The rewards are also emotional, they feel good about receiving something unique, and you get a big buzz out of that and receiving the compliment. Lots of great Karma is shared.

So here are a couple of things retrieved from the archive which aren’t focused on big bikes, blokes and big engines. The one above was done some years ago for a charity auction. A very old friend, who ran a gallery at the time, asked a number of people she knew to donate or create a work to be sold at an auction to raise money for a charitable cause. If my memory serves me correctly it was called The Yellow Brick Road Foundation, a children’s charity, hence the subject of the picture. I don’t remember how much it raised, but it was very satisfying to know that it sold and the proceeds went to a good cause.

This second image is one of a number done over the years for my brother who runs a veterinary practice and likes to create a new brochure every now and again. Once the images have been scanned for printing he has them framed and placed around the surgery to add bit of light hearted interest to the place. It’s a nice touch and pleasing to know that many others get to enjoy the pictures on their visits. Here I was making a comment about the old adage that owners sometimes look like their pets, and vice versa.

If the archive is holding any other nuggets these will be posted too in the name of variety, which is the spice of life after all.

Both of the above were created using colour pencils and ink on cartridge paper, which was  pretty much my default setting for many years and remains a strong favourite.

Two for One.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Welcome to 2012, it’s the new year, and here’s hoping for all of us it will turn out better than the sooth sayers suggest. The new year always brings a short period for fresh resolution and reflection. Being a serial resolution maker and breaker it helps to keep things to a minimum these days, and whilst being happier, healthier and a little wealthier are all things to work towards, it is this small blog which is the main focus for attention this year.

Viewing the newly received stats report from the guys at WordPress will be interesting but, before that’s done I know already that I want to increase my blogging output this year, be more creative and get more stuff out there. Small and obvious goals but ones which are worth noting down. Employing a slightly sideways approach to this challenge the first task at hand is to clear the decks, as it were, and bring to light some things which have been sitting here waiting for a chance to strut their stuff and be viewed. By tidying up some loose ends, particularly in respect of showing a sketch and not the subsequently finished drawing, I’m hoping to clear a bit of a backlog, physically as well as mentally. The hope is that this will free up some much needed brain space for new ideas and projects.

The drawing at the top of the post featured as an initial scribbly biro layout and then a more tidy pencil sketch waiting to be given a good inking. It follows a theme which is proving to be quite enduring, lots of healthy detail centered around the middle of the drawing, some punchy contrast areas and a kind of fish eye lens effect in the perspective. It’s one of my personal favourites and neatly treads a line between feasibility, if you drag the idea towards reality, and a cartoon if you pull it the other way towards fantasy. Again it’s done in black Bic biro on A3 Bristol paper (250 gsm) which is rapidly becoming a kind of default medium for this type of drawing.

This second drawing, completed shortly after the previous one, again has the detail and contrast areas coming through. I don’t like to comment on my drawings too much other than to discuss more technical aspects of them, preferring to leave aesthetic judgements to others. What’s important to me in looking at these is seeing whether they show any improvements in style, technique and composition, that kind of thing. How far have things come from the early days of the blog when bike related drawings were starting to be a larger part of life.

Observations, of course, tend to vary depending on mood and other variables but, today three things in particular come across. First is the quality of my sometimes wayward cross hatching. It’s getting more even, probably due to being better able to balance control and patience. Certainly the latter, as making a zillion lines can get to you after a while, and remembering to wipe the end of the pen occasionally helps too, none of those horrible little inky blobs to contend with. The second is to do with shadows and ground lines. By worrying less about crispness, and more about texture, the “hairy” and “lumpy” approaches give texture to the ground the bike is riding over through implication rather than needing to render bits of earth. A happy accident really, it wasn’t part of the original plan. The final bit is about the riders and their clobber. Folding fabrics have always been a challenge and hard to figure out no matter how many times clothes were sketched etc. All I can summise is that less is more. Fewer wrinkles and bolder shading seems to be doing the trick. All that’s needed is to repeat how it goes from one drawing to another, the habit of referencing one drawing whilst making another has yet to take root fully, but it will in time.

Fresh eyes are often not your own.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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This drawing is one that’s been hovering around unfinished for a while, but is now done. I hope you like it. I’ve always been intrigued by funny front ends. I’m in no position to ever build a bike with such a concoction of engineering complexity, but I get some satisfaction from drawing these things. There are lots of sketches in the pile but this one made the cut last time around. The lines in the background come as a result of the following tale.

 

A good friend mine met me for a casual late sunday pint over the weekend and made a couple of interesting observations about the last drawing post. He was very complimentary about the image itself but what he said after that was the bit that mattered. He began by making comments about some of the much earlier drawings that had been on the blog earlier in the year. He liked them too but felt that they were somewhat isolated and hovering in a space not tied to anything. We agreed that it was the lack of background which created this feeling. What was really interesting was what we discussed next. Asked if I would ever start doing drawings of real bikes like BSA’s and Triumphs I said that I wouldn’t. The reason I gave was that it didn’t interest me, creating images of what already existed. There were already plenty of those in the world I suggested, and besides I didn’t feel like getting bogged down in worrying if I’d got all those niggley little details correct, stuff like that. He did not disagree with this approach but said that by including even a very simple horizon line in the newer drawings, what it achieved was to bring the drawing into the real world. This creation of a reference to reality somehow made the drawing more believable, placing it in a context that could be related to and giving a dimension, a depth if you like, that had previously been missing. I liked his thinking and was impressed with his perception.

 

You may remember that some time ago I spent quite some time talking about what to do in terms of backgrounds for some of the images. I’d messed about with a whole stack of print outs but never settled on a final approach or approaches. This conversation with my friend, although short, provided all the validation that I had not been able to find within myself for the direction that these things should take. Fantastic.

 

This is not only a great relief, but also a great way to follow on from my previous post about learning to judge your own work and be critical about it. I realised that I had completely failed to fully analyse this aspect of the images and come up with a strategy for what to do about it moving forward. I must at this point also thank Cecilia, one of my subscribers, for alerting me to the fact that one very good and simple way of engaging with the process of being critical about ones output is to go and do something completely different for a while. To engage in something totally unrelated to what you’ve been focussing on. This clears the mind and freshens the eyes in a way few other things can. Fresh eyes bring a new perspective. In the above case my friend Richards eyes were the fresh perspective. Thanks mate.

 

Adopting this idea on the latest drawings is really working, what will be interesting is where it goes next.

This is how far I’ve got with the work up of the sketch I showed last time out. It’s going into ink now so watch this space.