Tag Archives: illustration

Fast and furious.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
Reply

Dirt_rider_2

Welcome to the first post of 2013, a new year hopefully full of promise, creativity and unbounded potential for us all. Whilst trying my upmost to remain in a creative mindset over the holiday period, I have to confess I found it monumentally difficult to maintain any momentum. Still, there are some things to show today so the time wasn’t wasted completely.

 

The small doodles from the previous post have received a goodly amount of attention in their transfer from the sketchbook into the A3 Newsprint pad. Taking them up in scale quickly helps greatly in the process of nailing the views one is after and is a great way of giving the old freehand skills a good work out. The newsprint paper is possessed of a beautiful kind of softness which takes Biro pen really well, and so drawing is both fast and furious, though it has a strange resistance to certain media like chalky pastels. That said, it can withstand a healthy level of abuse for such thin paper. This stage of the process also provides a great opportunity to throw some colour about, just to see how things might work if that’s the chosen way forward. For this I’ve used some very old Caran D’Ache Neocolor pastels that have been with me for years. They don’t crumble like normal oil pastels, so less mess, but they still maintain a fair degree of smudge-ability, so you can blend and overlay the colour. Sat here writing this I’m of a mind to perhaps try them out on a much larger format sometime, once I’ve visited the art shop to get a few more colours that is, currently the small tin holds the remnants of perhaps half a dozen or so. There are quite a few of these little sketches to work up, so more coming in the next post.

Caferacer_2

 

It’s good to sketch.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
Reply

Lots of folk who say they can’t draw actually can, and time and again one finds out after some very elementary enquiry that the reason they’ve got to thinking this is that they never take any time to practice, and so, when they do pick up a pencil or pen it always leads to disappointment. For those of us who draw a lot, this kind of existential dilemma is a less formidable obstacle to overcome. That doesn’t mean though that things are necessarily easier for us. We still need to practice, just as much as someone who plays a musical instrument does, it’s the way we keep our skills sharp and develop ourselves.

The greatest practice is sketching and the best thing about it is that you can do it anywhere and at any time pretty much. It doesn’t have to be from life, though keeping ones observational skills up to scratch pretty much necessitates it. With a whole world out there to look at there is plenty of subject matter to choose from and nothing to be intimidated by. I have always subscribed to the view that it’s ok to visit a zoo, for example, and simply draw a building or a tree. You sketch what catches your eye, what you naturally gravitate toward. if you don’t like drawing people then don’t draw them unless you actually want to improve this skill. Sketching can be so easily turned into a stick with which we beat ourselves with, and this removes the fun from the exercise.Sketching is a drawers play time, the serious stuff comes later, so enjoy it. I’m sure lots of us reckon we don’t do it enough, but no one is counting the hours. The important thing is to do it when you can.

Here are a couple of sketches done the other day on a visit to the RAF museum at Hendon in North London. I tend to go with my old chum Ben, who’s pretty handy with a pen, and this lends an extra dimension to the day as we are able to meet up after sessions and discuss our sketches and the views, angles and processes we’re engaging with. It makes it much more interesting. I took a brown paper sketchbook I bought recently and after a couple of roughs in soft pencil I thought I’d have a go with a brown ink pen, which works well with the paper, and splodge some highlights around with a thin white chalk. The first one is looking up into an open cockpit of a Lightning fighter with a dummy pilot sat inside. The second a cylinder head from the radial engine on the front of a Bristol Bulldog biplane. There is so much to look at at the museum that one is never short of a subject, the collection is huge and it’s free to visitors too. What more do you need?

Finally here’s an update of the cherry red bobber I’ve been working away on of late. For a background I’ve decided to mimic the kind of bold swipes designers sometimes use to back up their marker drawings. More about this in the next post when it should be finished.

Daring to be different.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
Reply

TT Racer

There were only a few lines to finish and a couple of pieces of text to finalise but getting them done took way too long. That said the TT Racer image is now complete and here it is. I’m pretty chuffed with how it turned out.

There are always an awkward few moments upon finishing an image when you have to push yourself to bring your critical eye to bear on it. The euphoria of finishing and regarding your completed work often promotes a kind of inner forgiveness where it’s comfortable to overlook things that perhaps you could have done better. So a good shove is required to jolt us into action. So here goes.

I would probably change the tank shape from the flared form shown to something more rounded to bring some extra lightness to the centre of the image. Tonally the bike and rider could be separated a bit more and while I was at it his face could do with a little less inking. It is a great relief to see the blue washed background giving the image a good degree of punchiness but, a bit more effort to make it less blotchy wouldn’t go amiss. I like text boxes but I’m not yet fully convinced. It will likely turn out that there are times to use them and times when it’s best to leave them out, it all depends. As a first stab at inking over water colour on rough paper I’d say this is something to keep working at for sure.

In that vein here’s a shot of the next one already started. You’ll notice that it is a slightly modified version of a previous drawing done in black and white a couple of weeks ago. I have changed some small details like the riders helmet and some bits on the engine to create some difference. For this one I thought I’d try and be a bit more bold with the colours, as you can see, to try and capture or express some of the more exuberant approaches that custom builders bring to their craft. No one ever said a frame had to be black after all. We’ll see how it goes, it should be fun, and I’ll be trying hard to benefit from all the little lessons learned from the previous drawing above.