Tuesday 29 July 2008

Dr Sketchies: Completely Gaye!

Sorry about the bad pun. The scheduled model was Nina Arsenault, but she was overbooked and we we got the wonderful Gaye Boston instead.

Really!

So my disappointment in missing an opportunity to draw a T-girl Jessica Rabbit was certainly wiped out by the impressive physicality and poses Gaye brought to the stage.

The drawings don't do her justice -- I felt a little off last night, repeatedly thinking slower than I needed to for the time allowed. It could have been the heat. . . .

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Green Lantern for George


Here's a sketch for the manager of the Toronto comics (and so much more) shop, The Silver Snail! He's a monster GL fan, so gets a Hal doodle in his wee little sketchbook.
~Richard

Sunday 20 July 2008

The Smallest Legionaire

Woke up this morning and was reminded that I was suposed to draw a quick card for my son's best friend's birthday. He's really into the ancient Romans, so this was the result:
Would have loved to spend more time on it, but I was scrubbing colour in in Pshop while my wife and son were standing over me, waiting to go to the party.
Makes me think I should figure out a way to bring my computer set up to cons and do sketches this way. . .
~R

Tuesday 15 July 2008

Dr Sketchy's -- July 15

Manged to finally make it to another Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School in Toronto last night.

The model was all sorts of awesome. Her name's Laura Selenzi and she's got a website! Feel free to check it out and see how poorly I failed at getting near how gorgeous and sensual she is.

Her costuming was excellent - -would love an opportunity to actually do a much longer study or painting of her to attempt to capture how ornate and beautiful the clothes are.

There were the usual drink contests -- I drew the above one when we were suposed to partner up for some sort of Batman-themed version of her. I was sitting next to people not too interested in goofing, so I just gave her comic book boobs and didn't enter.

I arrived around 10 minutes late and ended up sitting wayyyy at the back, but a few people bailed around halfway through and I got front row seating for the rest of the night!

This contest was the first of the night -- draw Laura with/as/or something with a genie. I went for Genie Jackson!
Hah!
. . .
Well, it was the best I could come up with --I took too long to polish it off and ended up not even entering. One of my former students ended up winning the goldshlager (sp?) cocktail.

Next one's on the 29th -- hoping to make that one too! I got a Dr Sketchy's link to the right for anyone interested in checking it out.

~Richard

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Third Year part 2


After the set-up of knowing what will happen for the last part of third year (see previous entry) the first semester of the third year almost determines itself:

Monday
Advanced Penciling
Life Drawing III

Tuesday
Intermediate Storyboarding
Anatomy: Arms and Torso

Wednesday
Advanced Inking
Advanced Painting

Thursday
Intermediate Concept Art
Life drawing III

Friday
Illustrative Painting
Non-human Anatomy

Advanced Penciling
After the previous iterations of penciling, we get a course where the advanced practicalities of drawing for comics on an ongoing basis are dealt with. All the fundamentals must be understood to proceed here. The course load should clip along at a page a week so the homework load would be intense. Pages would essentially cover a variety of regular situations for comics artists; special effects sequences, urban, suburban, rural, and natural environments. The practical application of lighting and staging and other aspects of drawing applied to the moving camera of the artist would be explored, all with an eye to the work being handed off to an inker. Evan if the penciller never plans to allow another inker to touch his work post-program, the experience of drawing to that level of precision and finish is a valuable one.

Life Drawing III
The focus will be on understanding how the body moves, carries weight, rests as well as taking observations from the real body to enrich the student’s work as a whole.

Intermediate Storyboarding
This obviously follows up from a Beginning Storyboarding class. Assuming the fundamentals and language of contemporary storyboarding was absorbed, this class would deal with the practicalities of producing boards for TV, animation and film as a possible alternate or cooperative career choice for a comic artist.

Anatomy: Arms and Torso
I would think what this would cover would be self-evident, but my recent experience shows otherwise. This course would provide a variety of constructive methods to draw the arms and torso without ready reference as well as educate the artist on the skeletal and muscular anatomy as well as the kinesiology (how the body works).

Advanced Inking
Much like Advanced Penciling, this class would move at a page a week and assume the student mastered the fundamentals of the previous two iterations of the inking class. A variety of inking challenges would be presented, from content of the page action to a variety of artists’ styles to deal with. Even if the student never plans to ink another artist (or even their own work), the knowledge gained by going through the process would greatly strengthen their core drawing skills for their own work.

Advanced Painting
This would follow the previous painting courses by dealing with painting the figure as well as painting on location.

Intermediate Concept Art
Much like Intermediate Storyboarding this course would follow a primer on what the artist is expected to do in this field. Since many of the aspects of the current concept art field are skill specific, this course would stick to the skills most developed in the comics curriculum. Focus would be on character design, turn-arounds, prop and environment design. This course would also show how and where comics artist most often enter the concept art field.

Illustrative Painting
The practicalities of colour illustration would be covered; from how traditional to digital media are used and how to best communicate with the client and satisfy their needs. Specific assignments would cover comic covers, book covers, interior illustrations for textbooks and other books. Again, like storyboarding and concept art, this course would show how a comics artist could use their skills as an illustrator as a sister field.

Non-human Anatomy
This would be an intense overview of how animals and other creatures are assembled. Common comics related animals would get more focus (pets and work animals), but a broad understanding of how invertebrates, insects, birds and other creatures anatomy works enables the artist to inform the structural anatomy of aliens or monsters they may eventually design with a touch more realism.

So that would be what’s facing the student as they enter the September of their last year; essentially a polish on the comic skills they developed and a broadening of how they could apply them after they graduate.
Next time I come to this I’ll probably explore the entirety of how I’d like to see the second year work.

~R