escapingbabylon.com

More Circus Story work. On the left is a rejected(by me) design for one of the acrobats. The face isn’t dramatic or emotional enough for the piece. On the right is me practicing Lara’s design. Firstly, I’m kicking myself for ever designing that top, it’s been a pain to draw every time I’ve drawn it. It does work really well though. I also felt the need to put stuf in the background, so I did. And for the record, her hair is black, maybe her outfit too. I think the piece came out well, I even sorta got the angle. Hope you enjoy.

The tight rope walkers are tryout sketches for a website redesign I was considering. All faces besides the very last one are life sketches of people on the bus. The last sketch is one potential design for the acrobat in the ever present circus story.

I’ve noticed that in the past a couple of my visitors have come here searching for help in drawing hats. I’m not sure I can give any directions, but I can point you to Hats.com for reference.

So, I think I’ve finally figured out the design for the detective. There he is in all his glory on the right hand page. I was going for somewhat of a Ben Kingsley look. And on the left is his hat. This is a monumental acheivement for me, because I’ve been working on this guy’s design for a while, and I feel that this design is different enough so as to have some character.

So let’s see, I’ve got the ringmaster, the knife thrower, the kid, I’ve got the acrobats’ tattoos, I believe that the only character I really have left is the acrobat himself. Cool. This comic may see the light of day yet.

Allow me to direct you to the websites of one Becky Cloonan. She’s a really good artist with (by the looks of it) lots of influence of Paul Pope and Manga. She draws tattooed people really well. I’ve never been able to understand how to draw tattoos, the way they curve and what not. Or even what tattoos are cool. I think that this is mostly because, as the title says, I do not have a punk bone in my body. It makes me rather unfamiliar with the physical, mental and social stuff around tattoos.

Anyway, about the image. These are two characters from a sci-fi story that has been brewing in my head for ages. The one doing the punching is named Kal Reinhart and the guy sitting down is named Dravin Gar. I’ve been putting some stuff to paper, so I’ve decided to give those guys a sketch again. Many problems with the art (Kal in particular seems to be displaying an acute case of big head syndrome), but in general, everybody’s pants look fantastic.

So there’s this concept I have in mind that I wanted to do a webcomic for. And the dude on the top page was a concept for one of my characters. I had thought out this guy in my head, what’s his personality like, and why he looks the way he does. It had taken me a while but I finally had an idea in my head of what he should look like, even if the drawing on paper did not do him justice. So imagine my surprise when I’m at the busstop the next morning and I see a kid who is the spitting image of my character. Same hairsyle, same basic style of dress, same age, the kid even had some obvious athletic history (he was carrying a bag marked with the name of his wrestling team) as did the character. So the sketch on the right side of the bottom picture is a quick sketch so that I can remember that kid. It’s really awesome when that happens because then the real person fleshes out your idea with details that only come from a three dimensional character (for example, I never thought that my character would wear the backward cap, but it does fit with his personality/background).

I also discovered that prismacolor markers bleed through moleskine pages, and that if you haven’t practiced with your brush pen in a while, the first drawing you make with it will suck.

So, I’m back on my regular sketching program, and produced this page today.

Only one of them is based on a real person, and that’s the guy in a hat in the upper right. It started out being a guy on the bus, but first he wouldn’t sit still, and then he completely went and changed seats out of my view. So I just decided to make up the rest of the profile.

On the left, going from top to bottom, are sketches of the boy character in the circus story I’ve been working on forever (Asif, if you are reading this, I did start some actual pages) in a suprised and sad expression respectively. Then I wanted to practice drawing an overweight kid, because one of the characters in a story I’m attempting to write is overweight, and I wanted to make sure I knew where fat lay. Finally on the lower right is a pose I was trying, but didn’t exactly work. There’s a better version of it on the next page that will be posted. I hope you enjoyed them.