First Sketches of The Artist

Today I drew a couple of versions of "The Artist", who of course will have a name.  I'm including two versions, shown in the order I drew them.  The first one shown is literally the first version. My artist is trying to make a living by selling original works, so he will be trying to think up ideas to make money, especially since he has very little.

Handyman Studies

Today I concentrated on creating the handyman character (HMC).  While drawing several versions of the HMC, I realized that the face has to be able to form different expressions, and still be recognizable as the HMC, and I thought of Spongebob Squarepants (SBSP), and all the extreme transformations he is able to go through, and yet still be recognizable as SBSP.  Of course he is a yellow sponge with a red tie, brown pants, and two buck teeth, so by keeping those attributes, the artist keeps the identification.  My characters, while not sponges, will none-the-less have to always keep certain basic qualities, too.

No final version of the HMC emerged today, but I started, and that's ... well, that's a start.

An Ugly Truth

After making a to-scale mock strip, albeit only 11 inches across, leaving off half of the last panel, I discovered that the drawing looked like the kind I think is done without very much talent. Since I believe I have talent, I (must) think that I need to pay more attention to what I'm doing. And I need to make sure that I do the best work I can, and hope it gets better. It seems that it's more difficult to draw a strip than to doodle some interesting characters just once on a page. This may not be so frikken easy.

Now that I've scared myself, I tried scanning in black and white, and opening the scan in Photoshop. I get black horizontal lines throughout the image, when viewed in PS. I googled this problem, and found nothing. So I'm now back to scanning in color, and enhancing the contrast, and will destaturate, if necessary. The images look OK, so they may be OK as is. We'll see.

Character Sketches

I'm working on designing my characters, and have two that I'm tackling now: the handyman and the inventor.  I also want to work in the size that the final drawings will be, so I can get a feel for that. As far as I've determined, the strip size will be 4-1/16 inches by 13 inches.  Unfortunately, my sketch pads are not that large.

Here is an early sketch of the inventor character.  He appears to be a child, so I may have to either justify that, or make him older.  Changes could be major.

Initial Characters, and Other Thoughts

Well, today I actually spent 30 minutes with pencil and pen in hand, doodling two characters: the handy-man, and the actress.  I have to keep in mind that I'm going to be drawing my characters many times, and need to keep them as simple as possible, yet fully expressive. As they may morph over time, I also want to develop them enough so that they won't have to change too much. But if they only get better, iz no problem, right?

I used my new set of Sakura Pigma Sensei® "manga" pens of varying widths, and the included mechanical pencil, and 'latex-free' white vinyl block style eraser. I'm not sure why being latex-free is a big deal. In any case, I like the eraser. It does a nice clean job of removing the pencil lines, without effecting the ink. I'll have to see whether an electric eraser makes sense for me later. With my current output, definitely no need.

First Sketches

Saturday, I went to Richard's Art Supply in Alamo, CA to buy some drawing pads, and low and behold, they had a 'back to school' sales of sketch pads for half price.  So naturally, I bought twice as many as I planned to. But I bought one of each type of pad, so I could determine which will be best suited to my work style, assuming I have one.

Then the next day, I began to sketch, using the new set of "manga" pens I bought.  So far I have sketches of four characters, and I realize that I'm very much out-of-practice.  And I will need to draw them from all angles to solidify their shapes.  Much work lies ahead, before I can even begin to do the strip.

Today I'm preparing paperwork to refinance my house, so didn't do any drawing.