escapingbabylon.com

For all who may be following this website through its feed, you may have noticed there were a million updates today. Well I’ve been trying to make some changes so that it is easy for you to keep track of updates to the blog. First of all you’ll notice the buttons to the right. These are for your convenience, so that you may add a feed from this blog to the website or newsreader of your choice. Most of the updates were trying to get the bookmark script fixed so that whatever browser you are using, you will be able to bookmark the Blog by clicking on the link.

To make up for the lack of moleskine post, I will post an image that I did recently that (once approved, will be my second Threadless entry. I think that this one is better than the last. I did it completely by hand using brush and ink (and a non-reproduction blue pencil). The shirt is called Raven. When I get more information, I will post the link where you can vote for (or against it.

Although really, the reason I did the one on the left is to get the guy sitting on the back of the bench at the bus stop. The one on the right is a semi-character sketch. The stylised eagle is a tatoo design and the head on the bottom is a kid on the bus

Sorry if I’m not as interesting in my descriptions for this post. I am on the last half of a cold and the creative side of my brain is going bleh.

I entered a t-shirt on Threadless.com and am trying to drum up votes. So click the image above, and if you like the shirt, give it a score. If it scores high enough it will be printed and sold from the site and I will win some nifty prizes.

Firstly, I’m posting this because I have more to say about Robin’s costume, and why I think it works.

The other thing about Robin’s (that you really can’t see here) is that almost every section of it can be used to show movement. The hair is free to blow in the wind. He has a cape. The collar of his shirt could convincingly move, as can the gloves, his shirt-tails, and to a lesser extent, his pixie boots. For a character for whom motion is that important, this is a great asset.

Secondly, heres a different one. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep on Saturday night, so come Sunday morning I was pretty tired during church. So I take out my moleskine and begin to sketch using my brushpen (My moleskine and my drawing tools reside in my jacket pocket at almost all times, giving me easy access wherever) These are the results.

On the right, if you need some decoding of the image, is the beginning of my sketch of the pulpit, which was actually coming out pretty well. It’s one of those things about me sometimes, if I can get my mind to devote part of it to something else, it helps me think/concentrate. In the past, it would mean that during tests I would start to whistle. Now it means that in order to stay awake and listen to the sermon, I can sketch.

As you can probably tell by my last series of sketches, I like comics. Well the top image was me experimenting with a cover design to a comic that I want to write (not that I’m sure of the plot yet…) Those big grey blocks will be city buildings. I was thinking more in tone value than what the buildings would actually look like. So pretty much there would be two areas of “white” The sky and the young man, the buildings would be a block of grey, and the flock of birds will be the blackest thing on the page. I was thinking of getting a James Jean feel but I think I ended up more like Lee Bermejo except with less than half the talent of either man.

The other piece of design is the guy/girl in the kilt. It’s an early sketch for a friend. More on that when I do more sketches.

Thirdly, I’ve been linked by Moleskinerie which if you’ve found this blog, you probably know about. This pushes a bunch of my glee buttons. Go visit the site, say hi for me.

So last post I said I wasn’t happy with my Superman drawing. So what I did on this page (apart from the three bus-rider sketches) was to take my brushpen and just go at making a cartoony version of Superman so that I can find out generally what works and what doesn’t. I find this method often works for me because I can think in more general terms about what makes the character be who he is. So the only one I really liked was the one in the middle (what I fondly called the European Supermodel Superman) Mostly because he also has a bit of Chris Reeves in him. So after doing that for a bit, and needing to think of something else at work, I did the Superman in the drawing below.

I felt a lot better about this one, and it took some of the aspects of the sketch, particularly the cheekbones and the realization that Supes did not have to have a Jay Leno chin. Well that was so fun I decided to do some other DC Characters. There was a time when I used to do a mean Robin. Personally I love the Robin character. Despite all the fun people make of his costume, it does work very well for who the character was supposed to be (or at least who I see the character as). Robin’s a physical character, and so it is appropriate that he not be wearing a ton of clothing. Plus there is the whole innocence/energy thing that the bright colors are perfect for. He’s a character that wears his emotions a lot closer to the surface than Batman, and so his costume does need to reflect that.

Anyway I digress. I’m not completely happy with this Robin, I guess I’m out of practice. But I did seem to get some of the energy in his motion. There’s also a catwoman, whose pose didn’t come out the way that I planned it, but it works. I also made a conscious decision to give her wider hips than I’ve usually seen on her as an experiment. However, I did not spend a ton of time giving her costume any form of details, so the Catwoman is not as good as I would want it to be.

I need to start working on expressions more. Those are hard to get on the fly though, but I’ll see what I can do. I think I will also work on my Robin a bit. In the meantime, I think that is the best version of Superman you’ll see out of me for a while.