SPQR filler?
Sunday, 2 September 2007 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spqrblues
I have some minor, necessary, and of course not covered by medical or dental insurance surgery scheduled in a week or so. In case I end up too out-of-sorts for a while to do much drawing, and since I've reached a point where the story is completely spelled out and I know what happens in each installment, I'm working on creating a backlog of comics so the story will keep moving along even if I'm inert. This time I might even be able to resist posting the new comics allatonce.
I was also thinking of trying to distract everyone from the current lack-of-new-comic by amusing you with the very first sketches I did for chapter 1, plus a few other character-development doodles. But my sketchbooks aren't as nice and polished as other people's sketchbooks, where artists usually have lovely portraits of all their characters from various angles, and in different costumes, and other interesting things suitable for framing, as they develop each character's look. My sketchbooks tend to be itty bitty layouts of the comic, with panels ranging from an inch high down to, oh, a centimeter or smaller. And scribbles. And quickly jotted dialogue.
Each strip goes through many scribbled iterations in the sketchbook, as I tend to doodle the same thing over and over while the dialogue and the art solidify in my mind. Like a director watching actors rehearse, I watch my characters on their itty bitty stage and give them little nudges of new direction, and think of how their performance here fits into the overall story arcs.
Itty Bitty Sketchbook #1 page 1 -->
(It has seen better days.)
So. I might scan some filler art so there's something new to see each day for the next few weeks, even though it'll just be weird rough doodles. Avert your eyes!
Hmm, maybe I should have spent more time developing each character's look and working on drapery and chiaroscuro effects and whatnot, and less time doodling....
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Date: 2007-09-02 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 12:58 pm (UTC)I'll be sure to post about all the horrific details... well, maybe just a few.
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Date: 2007-09-02 07:24 pm (UTC)And I love what we can get creative wise! Thanks for sharing!
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:02 pm (UTC)I hope the job chaos that was going on when last we spoke is slightly less chaotic now.
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Date: 2007-09-02 09:44 pm (UTC)"maybe I should have spent more time developing each character's look and working on drapery and chiaroscuro effects and whatnot, and less time doodling"
...Are you dense? Every artist has a different approach to thier sketchbook, and I'm thrilled you've willing to even show us a snippet inside you sketches...I can be *VERY* protective about people thumbing though my sketchbook, as I can put in *anything* in there but it's my own private thing...Sort of like a journal.
doodling is just another way to develop your art...At work I'll sneak in a few seconds of a doodle here and there...Even if it's the same exact pose, but it'll never come out exactly the same...I'm currently OK with that. Sometimes the randomness is good, sometimes repetetiveness is good too.
...If you spent all of your time working on clothing/drapery...I think your comic would suffer, it would become too dense and too foucsed on the clothing, not on the situation/story or characters...Besides, I think your current approach to clothing is just fine, it works out great for the feel of your work in the comic...Not overdone, but subtle enough to get the idea across.
Don't be a Kadinsky! :D
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Date: 2007-09-03 12:58 pm (UTC)Oh, constantly! :)
Nowadays I'd never let anyone just flip through the sketchbook (it's dangerous in there, someone could get hurt), but I'll continue with the guided tour skipping over the more incoherent parts.
My high school sketchbook was awfully careful and precise (I was thrilled when any of my friends showed a rare vague interest in seeing any of the drawings), with anything not meeting muster crosshatched into nonexistence with sharp strokes of a tiny crow quill pen. But few things got excised, because each drawing was so carefully considered before I even opened the bottle of ink. I think I only did random doodles when I doodled abstract shapes in the margins of notebooks at school (undulating grids representing the warped fabric of space-time, eating undefined cubes of matter, you know, that sort of normal teenage thing). In the sketchbook I'd draw and carefully shade in every stone in a castle wall, ever leaf on a tree, dot in every grain of sand on a beach (unduly influenced no doubt by that pre-Raphaelite who spent years painting every blade of grass in his magnum opus--come to think of it, I did do a painting once in which I spent a month painting every blade of grass, in layer... and I have to tell you, once you do it once and see what it's like, you really don't want to do it again...).
Somedays, though, I just wake up feeling like this (http://www.sai.msu.su/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/kandinsky.comp-7.jpg)....
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:44 pm (UTC)I once tried to draw a Great Gray Owl...With all the little details in the feathers. I got about 1/2 vertical of the bird done, with the other half left as an outline, and just couldn't do it anymore. It was partially being done as a "demonstration" where I had a booth set up at an art festival and people could come up and watch me...toil... So I just left it as is...
I'm now in the middle of another Great Gray drawing but this guy is in flight...from a tiny picture...And damn the foreshortening on the wings is tough, nevermind the feather patterns. It's to the point where I can't decide to stop while I'm ahead and call it done or to keep picking at it indefinately.... Le Sigh...Ze arteest suffeurs!
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Date: 2007-09-03 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-02 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-02 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 01:24 pm (UTC)Well, I might experiment with a little more ink here and there; Felix's toga should keep me busy for a while (drapery! dark cloth! shadows in the sinus curve! :) )
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:11 am (UTC)Best wishes for your surgery and recovery.
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:26 pm (UTC)I pretend the sticky notes are colour coded, but really I use whichever colour my eye is drawn to at the time....
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:15 am (UTC)Dr. Phil
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Date: 2007-09-03 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 01:47 pm (UTC)I like the little detail of Felix and Mus sitting on the ground and pondering.
Felix looks so forlorn though...He needs a Spendusa to cheer him up ;D
Ugh...one of these days...a webpage...and scanned images of my work to show....hrmf
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Date: 2007-09-03 02:16 pm (UTC)Yes, do!
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Date: 2007-09-05 12:35 am (UTC)Suzene @ IJ