It's been a while. I've been experimenting with my tablet (I got one, for those who don't know yet) and my results have been rather unworthy of postage. However, I was working on a hypothetical first page of "A Glass Darkly", which is a comic Watson and I are working on, and it will be my first tablet post. This will not actually be in the comic, I just gave myself the task of making a first page so I could work on the character and experiment with actually making a comic page at the same time. As you can see, I have chosen a landscape layout as opposed to portrait, as at this time I think we will be wholly embracing digital distribution, and presentation online is better suited to wider than tall.

Anyway, I'm getting better at sketching on it, but inking is a challenge at this point, since I don't have a good program, and the brush tools/settings at my disposal are inadequate. Also, it is just hard.






Oh, and I won't explain what's happening in the comic on this blog, as it would kind of give away the plot, but I might in person, if sufficiently...asked.

Save us from what we have become tonight
Eyes glazed with distrust, no sense of wrong or right

I was going to wait until I had more drawings to post this, because I was going to have a Londo Mollari extraveganza. But, the second one is becoming problematicin the facial region, as faces sometimes do. I wonder If I should do the face immediately after the rough outlines, just to see if it's going to be a problem. It is rather frustrating to get a nearly finished piece made practically worthless by an unexplainable inability to make the face work. Right.

I like this though, his face is a little too fat, but I hope he'd forgive me.





Anyway, I decided to just go ahead and put this up by itself, because I'm sick of looking at G'kar when I chech for comments, and because I'm going to have to cut short my Londo, and even my B5 theme for a while. I have at least two projects which require my immediate attention, and several after that which hold rather more potential for a future than simple B5 fan art. Anyway, expect different subject matter, although I may not be able to post some of them on here, for mysterious reasons.

The only way to cope is to realize

Here we go, continuing our B5 theme. I'm almost done with the fifth and last season, and it's gonna be too bad to see it end. I don't ever seem to remember how much I like sci-fi until I'm actually watching it. I like tv series way better than sci-fi movies though, longer = more story = more characterization = usually better.

So yeah, this took me 30-40 minutes, using a couple of photos I got online for reference. When I finished it, I was really happy with it, and i still am, but about 2 minutes after it was done I started seeing all sorts of flaws. I'm gonna just let go of that though, and be done with it. It's not practical to work on something until it's perfect, because it never will be. Not that I couldn't improve it, but it's not anything I have plans for, so it's not really important.






Anyway, for those of you (...if there are any...) curious about drawing, or how I look at it, I'm going to share a little something with you. In my year-and-a-half to two years of drawing, I have had one major revelation. I didn't read it in a book, or hear it in class, it was all my own. Here it is.

Draw the whole, not the parts. Sound obvious/smart/onion? Well, it makes a world of difference for me. One of the old adages in the world of drawing is the obvious sounding "draw what you see", which sound stupid until you realize that you usually don't. You see, most people look at something, and then look away and replace the memory of what they saw with a concocted mix of memories. This is one of the hardest things for a beginning artist to overcome. For example, drawing a face seems pretty hard at first, why is that? You look at someones nose, you look down at your paper, and then you draw something that looks completely different. Where does the miscommunication occur? It's not between the brain and the hand, but back in the brain itself. Instead of allowing yourself to simply draw what you see, our brains naturally take in an image, and replace it with a simplified archetype of our own creation. This varies in intensity between individuals, but everyone does it. So really, telling someone to "draw what you see" really is good advice, just not clear to most people. Anyway, I find that the most effective way of keeping my drawings true to what I see is to always be remembering and focusing on the whole as I draw the parts. This is the difference between drawing a nose as a line in a circle, and drawing something that actually feels like a nose. We can't draw everything at once, but the key is to remember I am drawing a face, and not just a nose. The nose is attached to the face, and interacts with is through light, shadow, wrinkles and so on. When you look at someone, does their nose have an outline around all of it? Of course not. Now while we do add some lines for stylistic reasons, it is usually more accurate to what you see to just draw one side of the nose, and then shade the slope of the near side, than to draw a line around every section. I didn't intend to use G'kar as an example, but I do kind of like his nose.

...Sheesh, I didn't intend to write such a manifesto. In summary, the best drawing advice I have is those two things. Draw what you see, not what you see put through the filter of your mind; and draw the whole, not the parts.

Thank you for listening to me ramble (unless you didn't, than you're a loser).

JDM

I used to think that I was strong
until the day it all went wrong

Edit: Here's a picture of the character G'kar for those curious about how he really looks.

Here's some drawings, but not much of a post. They are kind of dark, as far as lighting goes. Silly camera.








It's been the worst day
since yesterday

Ok, my life is no longer busy, it is now crazy.

Sorry.

The glove compartment is inaccurately named
and everybody knows it.

Hey people who read this. So, yeah, I've been kind of busy lately, so even though I've been drawing some stuff, I haven't put it on here for a while (obviously). I'm think around Sunday I should have 3-4 drawings for ya, so just hold on and try and last out the drawing drought.

When you say it's such a clear day
Though it be a clear day
You turn around and the people will say
Must be a cloudy day

Well, it's been over a week since I've updated, which was actually kind of nice to just not worry about it for a while. But enough of laziness. I'm still not sure about a specific schedule yet, but I'm not planning on any more week-long breaks. That is the benefit of "friending" me though, in that you don't have to check back here all the time just to see I haven't updated. Yes.

I call this "spidey hands" for hopefully obvious reasons. I drew it on a 11X17 page insteat of 9X12, and it actually made quite a bit of difference. Unfortunately, one of those differences was that I had to take a picture of it since it doesn't fit in my scanner. The necessary brightening process made it look rather grainy, but it looks alright. Here ya go.






Hint: Comments make me update faster...Yes, even if you comment "dont update". I'm afraid the content doesn't really affect the formula.

there goes today
it slowly fades
slowly fades away
here comes today
never go
never go away

Obviously, I'm not living up to my goal of a new drawing each weekday. I don't want to just give up, but it doesn't look like this is going to be realistic during this fall/winter. School is getting a little more intense, and so is work, as the holiday rush is building up.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know that I will try and figure this out, but the most likely solution is once again altering the update schedule to make it a little more feasible. I'll let you know when I decide for sure.

And this is my game face

I realized that I haven't posted anything since tuesday. Bad me.

Anyway, this has to be quick because I'm going out with my posse from work. Well, I'm not sure if it's technically a posse, but it's kind of a fun word. Like kumquat. So yeah, kind of whizzed through homework so I could go, which isn't easy for me. I'm kind of slow at homework usually. Research writing, at least.

Anyway, Mouseguard #5 came out today, but I didn't read it yet. I still felt inspired enough for this though, which is probably my best mouse of this kind out of a few tries in the last couple of months.






Everday it's the same thing
Another trend has begun
Hey kids, this might be the one

I am tired. Work was...intensive.

This is the sketchiest sketch I have posted so far, so things such as shading, line weight, and clarity are just plain absent. You're gonna have to deal with that, and then you're going to go out into that big wide world and sing. You're gonna sing a song to everyone that will listen, and as they hear your song, they will feel just a little like they did as a child, when they were confused more often.

Anyway.






A special thanks to Bri who gave the best detailed feedback on my last post, and in general as well. You see, some things I already knew about, but some I didn't. And that is what we call in the art field "helpful". So yeah, comments which just let me know that someone read my post are more than welcome, I don't expect everyone to give me a two page response, I just wanted to point out how awesome feedback is.

I got another confession to make
I'm your fool