Not About Todd Goldman

This kind of stuff confuses me as much as it angers me. I know it's been going around for awhile but it shouldn't be old news until it stops.

Because I wanted to get in on this.

Faces Only a Mother Could Love

The post title was the theme for this month's 'girl jam' at Drawingboard.org. This was my kind of jam as good looking characters are nice to look at but you can get a look more character into an 'ugly' face. Ugly is the wrong word though. None of these pictures are of pretty women but some of them are certainly attractive in a way. I really like the big woman with the mullet and could look at her for quite a while and The girl with the long nose looks like she has a bit of a sad story to tell.

My Most Viewed Drawing...

...According to hits I get from Google Image searches anyway. It's one of my favourites so it's fitting I guess. A lot of people out there doing 'flapper' searches.

Yes, this is flagrant post recycling but I just thought it was interesting anyway.

New post!

So something happened recently that's got me all excited about drawing again. We've been a little busy at home with some family issues and some changes to our homeschooling and drawing kept getting lost in the shuffle. But now I have the prospect of a project to work on. A real, honest-to-goodness project! I'm over-the-moon excited and extremely grateful to the person who gave me the opportunity and my fingers are just itching for pencils and paper again.
So...More boobs. But all they ever seem to post over on drawingboard.org are nude females.

Frustrated

I have to say, holding on to a goal is tough. I've never really bothered with that before as I'm more of a floater then a committer when it comes to things I want to accomplish. I tend to simply shift goals rather then stick to them.

I decided I wanted to be a penciler this summer. For the longest time it seemed inevitable. I knew that I was absolutely going to be one. Then my drive slowed down. Christmas was coming and there are lots of little joys involved in that like baking and telling stories while snuggling with the kids that can push bigger thoughts out of a person's mind. A thought of being a comic book artist sometime in the future really loses it's immediate grip when you're feeling fullfilled by the accomplishment of baking a damn good gingerbread (damn good!).

So coming out of christmas I was in danger of shifting goals again. I really like being a housewife after all, isn't that enough for me? And then, in January my husband I decided to shift focus in our homeschooling. Up until now we've been radical unschoolers meaning no lessons and simply taking learning for granted as a part of life. Our basic philosophy on learning hasn't changed but we've picked up a math curricullum for our 8 year old and I'm getting into planning some more focused studies. So again, drawing is put aside as I search for activities and downloads on ancient Greece for my 8 year old (She loved the Illiad, such a sucker for gore, and today we're making tunics, pelos and himations (ancient greek garments) for her Barbies). It's exciting and fun stuff. But it has it's dangers.

It's a problem of immediate pleasure and joy trumping the longer term goals. It's a matter of trying to find the balance between enjoying what I'm doing right now and putting work into goals for the future. Putting aside the plans for the mini trebuchet (middle ages next month!) and picking up the pencil and paper.

That damn discipline thing now that the sense of being destined to be a penciler has faded a little.

I'm not sure how much sense that made but I thought I'd write it down anyway as it's been frustrating me for awhile.

Anyhow, here's a sketch I did after a Frank Franzetta picture. No comparison of course but good lord, that man loves his booty.

Finally back.

Apologies for the long break. I have done no drawing for the past couple of months as it was filled with baking, family time and cleaning. December anyway. January has been more a matter of lazing around after the christmas rush. Anyhow, I though I'd post a couple of naked ladies I did for Drawingboard.org's drawing jam.

test post.

Let's see

post test.

The dog

A couple of sketches of our dog Kia. She's a mutt though from her colouring we know she has rottweiler in her somewhere and her excitible personality, penchant for sniffing and head shape also have us thinking she's got beagle in her. Maybe basset hound too as her legs are too short for her body. Then there's her tail. It looks like it's not attached right, a last minute addition someone rammed into her backend.

But she is a lovely, loving, wonderful dog.

The full body sketch looks okay in the front end but the backend doesn't work.

More sketches

These are more little face sketches I did the night I did the ones in the last post. The blonde with the curves actually looked like something out of Mad Magazine (I can't remember what artist and yes, I used to be an avid Mad magazine reader) until I overworked her. In two pencil strokes she went from something really cool that evoked Mad art to just another blonde. Sigh.

I like the last one myself.

Okay, I'm back.

And I'm back because I noticed this morning that my little Lexmark icon on my toolbar had a red 'x' on it. I ran my mouse over it and beside the 'exit' choice, in brackets was, 'disables scan & copy buttons...'

Um. Could I have clicked exit on the Lexmark icon? I've restarted the computer since then, so what if I tried one more time...?

I plugged in the printer, tried a scan and voila...It works.

I just cannot communicate how completely stupid I feel at the moment. I mean, it's a complete and utter feeling of absolute stupidity. Feel free to laugh at me.

Oh boy. So the blog will probably still be slow until after christmas but then whenever I say something like that, declare my intentions, I generally turn around and do the opposite so who knows?

Anyhow, a few sketches that I liked. The first one was done a week ago but sort of captured that moment of exposed dumbassery when I realized my all-in-one was most likely fine. I call that sketch, "D'oh!"

Hiatus

This is miserable. My other scanners (I had two old ones) would probably work if I could find the damn power cords and cables. But who knows where they are? So I'm left buying a new all-in-one...After Christmas.

To be fair to the family though, I'm supposed to be baking and decorating right now so if my scanner had to go, now was probably a good time. So let me take a break until Christmas is over and done with and I have a shiny new Lexmark cheap-piece-of-crap to scan my drawings on. I'll stick any work I do away for the new year and there will be a whole pile of good stuff waiting to be viewed.

Scanner dead

Darn it. I went to scan some sketches today and when I pressed the little button my machine did nothing. I'm suspicious because it looks like little hands were playing with the paper feed function (which doesn't work now either. The whole machine is snottily unresponsive).

However, it's a $50 all-in-one printer we bought last January because it was cheaper then buying cartridges for our last printer so I think we got our money out of it. Now it's probably either go buy another cheap one or fire up the ten year old scanner I've got tucked away in the basement. We'll see.

Drawing box pictures!

I have to apologize for how long it's been between posts. Starting with Halloween we moms enter our busy season. I'm not optimistic about frequent posts between now and Christmas either. As a canuck mom I don't have to worry about Thanksgiving (that was back in the beginning of October for us) but I'm a big believer in celebrating Christmas as a season so I'm already starting the baking, planning, christmas cards, etc. Busy stuff. So apologies if my posts thin out for a couple of months.

I do however have the completed drawing box that my dad built for me (my contribution was passing him the wood glue or nodding knowingly at key moments) so I can post a picture.

















It's a rough plywood box (Mom and Dad are renovating so free building supplies! Whoo hoo!). The top, where I draw, has a thin piece of pressboard on it for a smooth drawing surface and a lip at the bottom to hold pencils and paper. The top is a bit bigger then the box and measures 19 inches by 24 inches and is attached to the box by a piano hinge. The piece that holds up the drawing surface is neat. I had visions of a couple of sticks, one at each corner to hold the surface up but dad cut a support that's hinged to the bottom of that surface and he or mom glued some velcro on to hold the hinge when it's folded flat and not in use. He regretted not putting a latch or handle on it and thought we should have used a much better grade of plywood but heck, I'm thrilled. The drawing surface is fantastic to work on and the angle is perfect. And the making of it made for a great memory with my dad.

I love it.

Unfortunately, the kids love it too. It's been used for drawing and a jigsaw puzzle surface almost nonstop since my mom dropped it off yesterday. Here's a picture...




The back's of the heads are, from left to right, my neice Maddie, my son Harry and my daughter Catherine.

About all the non-comic book stuff...

I know most of my recent posts have not been comic book related but I was looking at sample comic book scripts a couple of weeks ago and realized that MOST of what a penciller is required to do is not superheroes. It's planes, cars, buildings, scenery, spaceships, robots, animals and ordinary people. So I'm lightening up on the superhero sketches for awhile to focus on other subjects and I think I will be inking after all, not because I want to do it in the future but more because it makes me really work on finishing pieces (the discipline thing). Not that there won't be superhero pictures too, but they'll be a lot more stuff that seems unrelated.

Woman in ink.

Yesterday I picked up a couple of pens at the local drugstore for inking. I know they're not inking pens or brushes or anything and I'm saving my pennies for whenever I finally get in to an art supply store in town but they're better then nothing. Inking isn't something I thought I really enjoyed but then I inked my yoga sketches and neice's coat sketch from the last two posts and though their crappiness was spectacular (don't know if I should boher posting them) at least they got me to realize that inking is quite enjoyable.

So today I picked out a stack of National Geographic (is there really any better source for beautiful subject photos?) and went through until I found an absolutely beautiful woman to draw. I did the pencil sketch and it turned out so nice. I was afraid to screw it up with pens. But being afraid never gets you anywhere so...

This is the finished product;

Nude Ladies! Beware!

Another post! I've been in a drawing mood tonight so I went over to drawingboard.org and did this month's drawing jam. It happened to be nude yoga poses. Very quickly done but I think they turned out pretty nifty. I have to admit that I love drawing nudes as they have all the most interesting lines and shadows.

Almost had a disaster though. One of the neighbourhood kids that plays with my daughter (they're both 8) just about wandered into the kitchen where I was drawing. I screamed, 'noooooo!' just in time. Whew. I really don't want a call from his parents asking why I'm looking at porno on the computer while he's over.

My niece's coat

I went back and darkened it so it would scan better. The darkening changed it a little for the worse because my shading was pretty light and now the shading contrasts too much with the lighter parts of the jacket. Anyhow, it gives an idea of what I had done originally and it's still interesting to me.

REAL drawings

No comic book heroes or fun with Gimp this time. I took out my pencil and started drawing stuff around the house. A great pine tree I can see from my kitchen window, my neice's coat, my hand holding a cup. Great pictures I was eager to show. But my scanner sucks. The quality of the scans is just horrible. I might pencil over them again but some of them, especially the coat seems really nice just as they are and I don't want to ruin them. I have one anyway. It's the pine tree again with a woman's face stuck in front so that I have didn't have to draw more boughs. I was getting tired of drawing at the point. It's the only one that shows up after scanning and it's still awful.

Drawing Box

I was talking with Melchior in past comments about needing something to draw on besides my lap and mentioned that I had an idea for a wooden box with a top that could be held up at an angle for drawing on. This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving (which is why I've been remiss on posting for the past week) and I was at my parents with the kids for a few days.

My dad has a shop filled to the brim with metal and wood working tools. Plus he and Mom are renovating their house so there was a lot of scrap wood around. He and I figured out what I needed and built the box. Almost. He needed some small wood screws to attach the box and cover to each other by piano hinge but I expect to have within a week or so. I'll post a picture when I'm finished and if anybody's interested I can do up and post some plans as well. It's very simple but looks like it will be perfect for what I need.