Life drawings of androids

[scottmcd]

Had computer death this morning, so I'm having to scan this in from somewhere else, which has a worse scanner. Anyway, after some minor tweaking and reducing, here's the WIP for the fourth and last page of the story.

[scottmcd]

Here's the final, inked and lettered. I use the term "final" loosely, because I'm actually going to re-do the lettering, fix some inking along the way, and do the production for print. This is going to be the first half of an 8 page mini-comic.

[scottmcd]

Here are some studies of the elbow. I'd been having trouble finding decent reference for this kind of stuff and then had a blinding flash of the obvious -- I work at the National Library of Medicine. Quick trip to the reading room finds many great atlases, including some of the Netter books.

These, however, are from the Stephen Gregory Peck book, which I have.

[scottmcd]

More in the arm and elbow anatomy studies. I'm going to do a couple more of these from different angles and positions, as the Peck book has them. I'm starting to get that mental model of how the arm is put together. The brachioradialus was something I'd noticed but didn't know how to put into a drawing.

[scottmcd]

These are some hatching studies done with my brush-pen. It's much easier to do with a dip pen - Hunt 102 works well for me - because it's easier to control the flow of the ink. The brush has a wider variety of line to produce, at least for me right now, and requires a lighter touch. So, the first one was just abstract practicing, and the second one was a basic face. I'm showing them at different sizes to see the effects of reduction.

[scottmcd]

Two more practices at cross hatching. The blue is ballpoint pen and the black is brush. The one with the clouds has been somewhat reduced. Finally, I did a couple of practices of walking people. I took lots of photos at the Richmond Scottish Games, and these are from a couple of the pictures. About 5-7 minutes each.

[scottmcd]

I've been totally sick, which means I've had some opportunity to practice. I've been copying out of Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Figure Drawing," specifically in the distribution of masses. These are reduced a bit.

[scottmcd]

Got a lightbox and a couple of Windsor & Newton Series 7 brushes for Christmas, so today I tried them out. The sketch is from lunch, and I then inked it this evening. These are the pencils scanned side-by-side with the inks. The background is dry-brush, but I'm only starting to get my head around that technique so it's mainly just swirly rather than textured. Here's the original scan followed by a reduced and cleaned-up version.

[scottmcd]

A friend came up with an interesting story, and this is a character concept for the narrator. The story doesn't set a specific time and place, but I'm thinking steampunkish. The last picture was also a doodle in this direction.

[scottmcd]

This is prep for a drawing I'm working on. Specifically, I want to draw a convincing braid and figured I should see how they work. Did this over lunch today.

[scottmcd]

Just blocking out the basic poses before moving to details like clothing and background. I have a few thumbnails for background and overall composition, which I'll post later.

[scottmcd]

More Medusa progress. These are rough pencils, and as you can see from this scan, where I left in the spiral bound from the sketchbook, I started too close to the edge of the page. Probably a classic beginner's mistake. Anyway, Once I finish working out the background, I'm going to use the lightbox to produce a clean set of pencils (centered on the page) on 9 x 12 bristol board.

[scottmcd]

I rendered this way past where I should have for a rough, but it did help me work through some things that will come up when I do the real rendering.

This is the finished rough that I'm going to use with the lightbox to produce the clean version. That's next. I'll only post it when it's pretty much done rather than do a set of incremental updates.

[DIMAGYAN]

nice works. is good to see you are doing studies. the figures are better, still work more on the relation beetwen forms. try to mix some straigth and curve lines. the medusa piece is very nice, as advice i think the head is a bit small.

keep working and have fun!

[scottmcd]

Here are some exercises in shading. The leaf and branch are from life - though they're artificial plants. The sphere and face are made up. I'm also experimenting with toning the paper first and smudging.

[scottmcd]

I've been busy lately. Among other things I started a graphic design class at the local community college. Assignment 1 is to come up with 16 postage stamp design thumbnails. The theme can be either (or both) of "Love" or "Black History Month." Here are the 16, most done in ballpoint pen, but a few done in pencil. Next week, we're going to pick one to do in-depth.

[scottmcd]

Thumbnail for a cartoon I'm working on. Or maybe it's a rough draft, if you prefer. Final will be 8 x 8, and the punchline will be supplied by a collaborator. Will be fixing angle of the sidewalk lines, making the woman walking out of frame less stiff, and moving or re-doing the suggestion of the brick pattern between the two heads. I want to draw the eye to homeless guy, then down him to the sign, and finally over to the woman leaving. The bricks provide an alternate eye path that I don't think should be there.

[scottmcd]

Today's model had been there once before, and she's a good one. She picks good poses. The three drawings here are from today's session. I'm also throwing in a WIP of the stamp for my Graphic Design class. I might also do the beagle and compare the two in tomorrow's class to decide which to finish. I don't like the hands on this one, I think they should be a little more iconic and less realistic. Plus I'd need to find a good reference of that particular gesture.

[scottmcd]

Here are the inks. I'll take it from here in Photoshop and possibly Illustrator.

[ItalianHorsey]

Cool stuff here, I like your cartoony style. Keep working on the anatomy though. Keep drawing!

[scottmcd]

Quick stamp update

[scottmcd]

Italian Horsey: Thanks. I will.

Here's the final of the stamp for the graphic design class.

[scottmcd]

The model didn't show this week, so one of the younger guys took his shirt off and did model duty. He reminds me of Cary Elwes in the Princess Bride. I'm happy with this one because it actually is a good likeness.

[scottmcd]

Forgive the lined paper. There was a long meeting at work today that I used productively to practice cross hatching. Specifically, I wanted to work on layering cross hatch patterns to create form and depth. This is all with ballpoint pen.

Also, the A logo is an actual logo. It looks perfectly fine until you see the hideous reality of the logo. Then you can't un-see it, and you need brain bleach.

[scottmcd]

We had two models today, and I focused on the woman. After last week, I got suggestions over in the Critique thread, so I did the same kind of portrait to test them out. Here's the result.

[scottmcd]

Back to the Medusa picture. After the previous version I did, I used the lightbox to produce a cleaner set of pencils and then started shading, blending, and so on. This isn't done yet, but it's getting close. The main thing left to do is the man's feet and the marble flooring. I'm at my in-laws now, and my reference for the sandals is at home, so I'm going to finish it up early next week.

[scottmcd]

Working out of Burne Hogarth's book on light and shading, I did a few silhouettes of things around me.

[scottmcd]

Here's the "final" version of this piece. It's in quotes because I expect to make one more round of tweaks after any feedback over in the critique threads. I'm considering making the background a little brighter also. But, for now, this is pretty much it.

It doesn't live up to what's in my head, but I've learned a lot from this piece.

[scottmcd]

Today I worked on building volume through cross-hatching with pencil and then blending. This took about 2.5 hours, though I had two false starts.

[scottmcd]

Here's a second self-portrait. I've used Levels to make it a bit easier to see. It's light because the pencils are really just there for inking. I'm happier with this one than with the last self-portrait I tried.