Kick'n November with some sketchbook exerpts

  Not much to say with this sketch dump, really.

 

This is  a variation on Niccolaides' "Daily composition" exercise from "The Natural Way to Draw" (kickass book, by the way), albeit in comic strip form. 

  The Daily composition is a 15 minute sketch from memory of any scene seen during the past 24 hours. Nothing fancy, nothing precious, nothing to be shared: just do it and move on to the next.

  So Why not a daily 3 panel strip, and train that old brain to think visually and sequentially? Unlike autobiographic strips like James Kochalka's American Elf, the daily strip is not really for sharing (not yet, anyway), more of a variation on a theme. *

  

 

I can't say I'm really happy with what I'm turning out right now, BUT

 to paraphrase Fredrick Nietzsche: "Art is something to be surpassed".

*For those of you curious as to what the strip is portraying, a co-worker had come in that day in a dirty T-shirt, claiming somebody stole his laundry. Since the Michaels' hit squad comes out of the walls if you aren't to dress code, I hiked over to Macy's and got him an $8 work shirt from the clearance rack. 

   If I ever get hired at Dreamworks I hope I don't have to buy people clothes.

Sketchi Do Daa

 

So more sketch highlights, here. These come from a 6X9 Moleskine I received as a gift.  (The above image comes from watching TV).

 

  I've started putting page quotas in my daily calendar again: It's pretty good if you get self conscious about drawing(sometimes I refer to it as "Page Fright". 'Course, it's a SKETCHbook, so if every page looks perfect, you're probably doing something wrong.

 

A variant on the quota. The Daily Composition: The only chapter of "The Natural Way to Draw" that I re-read obsessively. (And also place on my daily calendar).

 

 Manifest boredom combined with a "Territory Ahead" Clothing Catalog. If you find one of these strange documents, note that the Women's clothing are all modeled, and the men's clothing is all folded and laid out on tables. Why are there no men wearing Clothing? Does Territory Ahead have a huge closet of Naked Men somewhere? (On the psychological level, don't we all?)

  Like my previous "Totoro" post, I figured I'd show my WORST sketchbook sketch, either for fun or just to make the better ones worth looking at.  Anyway, I found that I'd skipped a couple of pages, which I think counts...

 

 ... Because even the worst artists get better, but only if they continue. 

F*ck off, I'm drawing.

Let's say you're in the park, doing studies of old people and fountains, and a comple stranger wanst to look at what the hell you're drawing.

In "the Natural Way to Draw" Kimon Nicolaides wrote of the techniques described within "The exercise is merely a constructive way for you to look at people and objects so that you may acquire the most knowledge from your efforts."

To improve, you need to practice, and practice a freaking lot! For that, you need a sketchbook.

But wander around a convention floor for a bit, and there's sketchbooks everywhere, either visual autograph books with quick headshots jotted down by 25 different famous people, or published sketchbooks you can buy from famous people, like Dave Pimentel's "Evoke".

Published artbooks can be an inspiration and a joy to look at, and if edited correctly, show nothing but beautiful, finished drawing for the paying public to enjoy. BUT, I find that artbooks (or often, ashcan minicomics) titled as "sketchbooks" give the false impression that every time the artist touches paper, they just throw down a finished drawing.

Which is weird, like assuming every time Orson Wells opened his mouth, he delivered a stirring monolog.

Which brings us to that park analogy. There really feels like this expectation for sketchbooks to be less like a blooper reel filled with doodles, false starts and just bad drawings, and more like a polished, finished product. In truth, a real sketchbook, for personal use, the kind that's so vital to the life of an artist, is PRIVATE.


So Fuck Off, I'm drawing!

Effing around

I find one of Kimon Niccolaides' most valuable endorsements in "The Natural Way to Draw" is that of the Daily Composition: one 15 minute sketch per day of a scene from memory. The text is very specific that the Daily Composition doesn't have to be any good, it just has to be drawn every day.

On the sketchbook page, it just feels right, I really don't know why.

Anyhow, I thought I could devote some of my DC's to experimenting with an all-digital workflow, which I think is a bit of a challenge since all I've got is this cruddy little bamboo tablet, no screen tablets or magic pens here that let me, y'know, see what I'm doing. So far, it feels like a blind contour with really soft charcoal.