…and knackers your brushes. Which is not entirely unexpected. So don’t use good brushes. I took my own advice.
I finished the inking last night (this morning… *yawn). Showed it to my daugther this morning (the world’s harshest critic, after my wife). Her favourite was Gerry Shark, but apparently she loved the rest too. Bless. She also dropped the bomb that she (*eyelash flutter…) wants to help me paint it. Eep. Erm, OK.
I figured that I can get her to drip some paint on to the background for the sea and stuff. As long as I mask out the main characters which I’ll paint later, it should be alright… right?
Masking fluid is weird stuff. I’m sure there must be some sort of proper way to paint it only a google away. But, Sunday.
Even my dad likes this one. “That’s good that is. You should frame it. Don’t paint it, its good as it is.” High praise indeed. Intriguing how the doodle absorbs what’s going on around you. Telly, and children with ants in their pants sitting on you in this case.
Still got paper stretched ready to do a kids character underwater scene. This is the first stab at notorious undersea(world) crime lords Ronnie Ray and Reggie Cray of the Criminal Crustacean Consortium.
Will paint up some of these soon as I can muster the juices
Doodling. Takes a new pen to rekindle the feeling of drawing for drawings sake.
There is method to the madness, probably. There’s a bird fish thing and a lizard claw thing. Keep the layout balanced, make psychedelic madness. WIP.
Did some ugly fish. This pen draws ugly fish. Aiming to paint it with watercolors. Why wouldn’t I?
Millicent the magnificent manta ray.
Robbie The Rock Lobster. Didn’t work. Stopped.
Roughs for an underwater scene. I’ve stretched some paper. I’ll doodle some madness. Then I’ll colour it in. Barry whale having a party with his mates. For my daughter. You massive crazy.
Barry Whale joined us one night at my daughter’s bath time. Barry Whale likes Jam Cake and small girls with clean teeth.
Barry Whale lives in the ocean, but is also a space whale. He likes lasers and going to parties with his friends Oswald Octopus, Jerry Shark, Gerald Jellyfish and Robby the Rock Lobster.
I haven’t been able to make it to the last couple of classes, but I’m back again tonight.
I spent the entire session using a calligraphy brush and Sumi-e ink on A2 cartridge paper. *note to self read up about history of sumi-e http://www.drue.net/sumi-e-history.htm *
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This is only the second week I’ve tried this, so lots to learn. Such as – how the hell do you stop the pooling of ink into blotchy areas? How am I meant to transport wet, inky paintings at the end of the session? Just how chronic was Jan-Michael Vincent’s cocaine habit during the filming of popular 80’s TV series ‘Airwolf’?
Chatting to one of the models after the session, she mentioned water colour artists face just the same problems. I’ve just inherited a bunch of watercolour kit and I’ve always been scared of watercolours. Perhaps now is the time to learn.
Once upon a time there was a house on Coldharbour Road. It became infamous for its many crazy, debauched costume parties. I lived there for four years, its where I met my wife. The house lives on as happy memories for many good people. We rocked the place ;)
A few years ago I asked an artist friend of mine who used to live at Coldharbour to draw me a picture of one of the early parties for my 30th birthday (he was infact the guy that found the house, lost the house, then found it again so that the legend could be born…) He never got round to finishing the picture and gave me something different, but equally cherished instead. I wanted to pick up where he left off – this is where I got to with a rough colour test.
Here’s another quick animation test of my Life Drawing inkings which I haven’t posted about yet. Its all very early stages with this stuff and I don’t really know what I’m trying to achieve yet, but i’m having fun being in production mode again…
Dave Cropley 