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I could have sworn I'd already replied to all this! Damn. But it's good to see there's been a nice bustle of activity on here again! And lovely stuff going on it is too.
I especially like the wee frogs iamus. Love the solid colour musical notes. I'm often getting myself in to a muddle with what the best way to do solid colours is, haven't decided for myself yet.
You know, at the moment I've been finding the more I learn in photoshop the more overwhelming it can be. Not to say it's overcomplex or anything, or even that I'm overcomplicating things, but that keeping track of various techniques or how to do certain things can sometimes make me get a bit lost simply for knowing too many routes to essentially the same things. I would say that perhaps it would be wise to set up some actions I can use, and yet I don't want everything to end up looking the same. Does anyone else find this? It's nice to open it out and start working in different areas, but at the same time there was something comforting about just playing around in the same corner too. Ha. All these new things I know about scanning, spot colours, file types and so on, it can get a bit much! I think it's simply a matter of now needing to know more exactly what I want to do to something first - I always had an idea before, but probably lacked the skill to carry out some of these things well enough.
Anyway, enough sidetracking - to continue Nelson's badge theme, I think I'd take one o' them frogs on one. They're great and it's as if I can feel their MERRY DANCE.
That is some great stuff, MacReady! Love the change of styles, really simple effective colours and lovely stark black and white. I'm kind of struggling for what to say, but I think they're both fucking fantastic, really. Do keep us posted as to where they will both be available! I'd like to own them.
Nelson - I don't know what there is to say. That's an awesome fucking cover. And that I can feel a sense of your brainmelting pain just by looking at it, so can only imagine what it must have been like to draw! But really, really, impressive it is. I often look at drawings like that, staggering sprawling sort of cityscapes and stuff, wishing I could draw it, and POW - there you go with a stunning one. Really like the lights and subtle blending changes, although I think the car headlights might be my favourite. When can I buy it? Also will it be on vinyl? I don't have a record player, but I'd like it on my wall.
You look to be really, really enjoying all this dry brushery. Which is something I can only salute.
And it's interesting to me what you say about how you got to grips with a brush too, now you say it I think I may have done something similar myself. I could never get my head around doing everything with a brush, so I used to use primarily dipping pens because they would give lines with variation, the kind of which I had always craved. But everything told me that a brush was the best tool to use, so I started filling in shadows and using them in ways like that to bolster the pictures I'd make a little. And gradually I became more and more assured, and using them for more and more... it was a tiny brush back then.
This was around the time I did my first (and looking back, awful) comic, and by the end of those 20 or so pages I was just using the brush for pretty much everything. I can take a lot from doing that comic, but I didn't ever realise it was where I kind of learnt to use my brush! Which has gradually gotten bigger as I learnt that having, like, the smallest thing possible doesn't really mean you can get the smallest most delicate lines. A good one in between that tends to serve both needs is what I find best for me.
Sometimes it makes me a little sad that in comics, although the brush is highly regarded and the use of it respected, that so many people only really seem to utilise it to make very sharp clean lines, and I think a brush can offer so much more than that. Maybe it's all about making lines that reproduce well for some people, but I can't use a brush without it making me to want to really make the most of what I'm actually using.
I'm sure this is just me being silly, but I am so absolutely in love with using a brush and what appears to me as the absolutely limitless potential available from it. I mean, pens and stuff are good but I tend to look on them as something that can be fairly limiting. Which can be good, and they all do things which can achieve effects you might desire. But also I tend to think somebody who learns to draw primarily with pens, or only in one way or using very specific instruments that can only achieve a few different things will always be hemmed in by their own art if they do not learn how to use other things or draw in different ways (and esp. with comics, but then I do tend to think it must be incredibly boring to draw the same way all the time, with styles that can only go so far). For me, there's only so far that can go without reaching a sort of plateau and be unable to go any further.
But this may just be my deep seated hatred of struggling to draw with all sorts of "drawing pens" when I was young arising once again. But it's also evidence of how great I think brushes are, and how much more intuitive and flexible they feel compared to, well, pretty much everything else. Which isn't to say I won't use everything else too. I'm just bitter because I draw like shit with a pen. Also - you may have noticed - but my enthusiasm for brushes is almost dangerously overzealous at times. Ahem.
Indeed, Withiel, you might want to take a look at these pens and all - faber castell brush pens. I'm always harping on about these, I often use them for sketching and making very bold sharp lines. I always remember Cameron mentioning how he'd been using them way back, got some and had some around ever since (although I may also be remembering that wrongly, but whatever!). I notice a lot of cartoonists using these (or something like them, but it's quite distinct), especially for sketching and stuff. They are good to use in lieu of a brush, perhaps. Not the same but you can get some lovely lines with variation, but it's quite sharp and obviously offers much more resistance than a brush would by way of having a more solid tip.
I've been thinking about mark making a bit lately - I'm a big advocate of simply making marks with everything you have every now and then, just to see whats going on with it (and I'm saying this as much for myself as anything, I'm always telling myself to do this more!). Much like Nelson says he benefited from making lots of brush strokes while using a dry brush technique, you never know what might crop up. I feel like I've got a shitload better at using drybrush sort of effects just from using my brush more and more and understanding whats happening with it, making marks on paper day after day (or week after week, more like). I can integrate these things in to my pictures now in a way that feels satisfying and natural, more often than not (there's still days when yr not with it, some ways of drawing that I like that while quite minimal really demand you be totally with it or everything will fuck up. if you're depending on the strength of a few big, bold spontaneous lines from a brush it seems to increase the capacity for it all going very wrong. the good thing about this is that you can quickly try again and again from a basic template etc...
I think way too much about all this crap, time that may perhaps be better spent drawing! But I've been pretty busy lately too, working on a few different things, although nothing I have quite ready to show here yet! But because I feel like I can't leave this thread without leaving some kind of picture, here is a pig -
And a girl -
And a girl on a pig -
Plus a recent commission -
Aaaaaand something new I've been working on lately -
Actually that's probably most of what I'm doing in some form or other, I can't help myself. There's a few more things that I can pop up when they're finished mind...
I'm off to try drawing on some printer paper... |
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