Question:  What’s the best way to ruin a good sketchbook?

Answer:  By not drawing in it everyday.

I went to Porto’s Bakery in Burbank yesterday to do some sketching with some friends: Mike Moloney, Grif Kimmins, Maha Tabikh & Angelo Di Nallo.  Funny thing about drawing from life: if you don’t practice it enough, you forgot a whole bunch of stuff.  There are quite a few pages in my sketchbook that have fallen victim to that reality.

If you’re looking for a great place to do some people sketching, Porto’s is great because it’s very busy with people.  You get a wide array of people to sketch whenever you go there.  Anyhoo, a lot of the time spent was trying to remember the approach to people sketching.   After a few hours, I was able to muster up some decent pages.  Hopefully, I can get back into the habit of doing more sketching from life.  It challenges your observational skills and it’s sometimes fun too.  Cheers.

I bought an el cheapo fountain pen from Aaron Bros yesterday and wanted to try it out with a bit of people sketching.  I also had my waterbrush with me and thought it would be a good idea to do some inkwashes with it.  I saw Glenn Vilppu use a waterbrush in a one-on-one demo in his figure drawing class and liked the effect it gave his drawing.

After I played with the technique for a while, I wanted to see what effect the waterbrush would have on lines made with a tombow brush pen.  It’s interesting to see how water effects the different inks from each medium and some of the results were cool and some weren’t.  Anyways, let me know what you guys think.  Cheers!

THURSDAY & FRIDAY

September 24-25, 2009

TIME: LUNCH
LOCATION: TITMOUSE INC. (Internship)

SYNOPSIS:

For those that follow the blog, I usually spend my lunchbreak scribbling in my sketchbook.  I sit in front of a screen all day and just felt the need to draw on paper whenever I get the chance.  Sometimes I do creative drawing, but for the most part: I sketch whoever happens to be sitting at the table eating their lunch.

So if some of the faces look familiar from previous posts: it’s the same person that you think it is.  Whether or not I did a good job capturing them on paper: i dunno.

SATURDAY

September 26, 2009

TIME: 930PM-3AM?
LOCATION: COSTA MESA, CA (Will Ha’s Housewarming Party)

SYNOPSIS:

This weekend I was in the Irvine area because of a The Concept Design Academy’s 2 day summer workshop at the Laguna College of Art and Design.  It was a workshop that I couldn’t miss: so many talented artists doing lectures/demo as well as the talented artists that were there to learn.  It was an all day workshop, that lasted from 10am-5pm all weekend.  So I was dead tired and planned on staying in that night.

Unfortunately, it was also my college roomate’s housewarming party the next city over.  So I’m lying in bed and got a text asking if I was still going.  Long story short: I crawl out of bed and drive over to Costa Mesa to see people I haven’t seen in a few years.

I brought along my sketchbook because: (A.) I’m a natural wallflower (B.) Thought it would be a good opportunity to draw people. (C.) I carry it around with me all the time.  1 beer turned into 6 or 7, and here are the results.

SUNDAY

September 27, 2009

TIME: 10AM-5PM
LOCATION: LAGUNA COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN (2 Day Concept Design Academy Workshop)

SYNOPSIS:

Dead tired at the start of the workshop because of the lack of sleep I got the night before.  Good thing that the lecturers were great speakers.  Got to meet some of the students that go Laguna College of Art and Design and felt like they have a good community of artists in that school.  Anyways, got a mix of creative and people sketching done during Sunday’s workshop.  I think that helped me get through the day since I wasn’t the most energetic person that morning.

*NOTE: The left page of the first spread  is overlap from Saturday Night.

For the most part, drawing keeps me company when I eat alone and such. And if you follow this blog and the sketch duh-dumps, then you’ll notice that there are quite a few people that make guest appearances in this thing: they’re eating their lunch too and fall victim to my poor artist’s rendition of them.

Keeping a sketchbook is a constant reminder of what I need to work on.  There are far too many to list, but it also allows me to try different things to keep growing as an artist.  I’ve been watching Jason Seiler’s dvd recently and got some advice in that I should also have a sketchbook that I just keep for myself.  I’m pretty shameless about the showing my sketches and whatnot, but I think it’ll be a good idea to keep a book around just for me.  It’ll be a secret mission of sorts.

This message will self-destruct in  5….4….3….2….

THURSDAY – Lunchbreak Sketching

FRIDAY- Even More Luncbhreak Sketching

SATURDAY – Attempts at Caricature

TUESDAY – Lunchbreak Sketching and Attempts at Exploration

I’ve been doing so much work in photoshop as of late, I thought it was time to change it up a bit and experiment with trying to do some tonal work in pencil. I recently bought a conte carbon pencil to use for life drawing, but I wanted to do a dry run of the medium. After seeing Dave Colman do a tonal demo in his character design class, I thought it would be something worth trying out for myself. I didn’t use the same tools as Dave did, but I kept the essence of the demo in mind. Whether or not I was successful in it, who knows? The only thing for sure was that I had some fun trying it out.

Although I’ve been doing speedpaints during my lunchbreaks at my internship, I grab my sketchbook and draw whoever is in sight while I’m eating my lunch.

I’m not sure how successful these sketches are because I just sketched for the sake of clearing my mind. Sat down at a Starbucks and just drew as I collected my thoughts. More of a therapeutic drawing session.