In between projects for others, and looking for new employment, and catching up on household chores, I have made my own fun. Here are a few sketches and trifles from the last month.
Diversions
Art Experiments
Creative projects done because I felt like it.
Dream sketches Sept-Oct 2020
Since I have a little time in the mornings, I’ve been sketching my dreams as I try to learn photoshop better. Here are the latest:
100-Day Project: Faces (9-16/100) – comic book character portraits
I’ve been working on a comic book for some time, and am finally making progress on a manageable, short version of it. So, in service of this 100-day Project, I’ve double up a bit and have made some character portraits to use as reference as I go along. I’m still not sure this is the best style to complete the comic in–either for expression or for speed. But you need to know what people look like in order to simplify, I suppose.
First up we have Ute, a sort of old lady immortal werewolf character, smoking her pipe.
100-day project: Faces [5-6/100]
Busy days here in the heatsink of Seattle, news helicopters floating over the neighborhood for the protests. It’s a wild world, hopefully on the verge of a better one. I’m just at home half-assing home improvement projects and melting into a puddle of irritable, sunburned sweat.
Here are the two faces I drew on Friday and Saturday to stay on top of this 100-day project. My worry is that if I skip a day in order to do something extra good the next, I will not remember to get back on the face-a-day train. What’s the difference between knowing your limits and fearing them?
100-Day Project: Faces (4/100)
Today was a good day. Even though I am currently not employed, in the traditional sense, I am very engaged. I had an interesting dream before I woke up, and despite the heat and discomfort of the hot night I was very productive: Fixed up a job-seeking portfolio page, penciled a 50-foot panorama I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, sketched a bunch of shoujo eyeballs (Shoujo: Japanese teen girl-targeted comic books), made a delicious BLT sandwich…and scored two absolutely CHOICE garbage gems: a working, if rusty, push mower; and a vintage swiveling vinyl fashion chair that is the perfect height for my sewing efforts–no more turning my body into a question mark to thread the machine’s needle!
With all this going on, I nearly forgot to do my face a day, but I made it happen–behold:
For this I dipped my toes in the Japanese comic book-centered digital drawing software program, Clip Studio Paint. I’m not sure I’ve got the hang of it yet, and I’d like to add some more airbrushing effects to really sell that classic 1970s shoujo anthology cover look, but for today I think it’s all right.
100-day Project: Faces [3/100]
I’ve been wanting to draw a floorplan, but I needed to fulfill my commitment to this project, so I mashed them together in Adobe Illustrator.
As I went along, it became more and more a version of my dream home–entertainment space, lots of reading nooks and natural light– and wheelchair-friendly to boot!
100-day Project: Faces [2/100]
I love to watch the CBS movie-of the week series Columbo, starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo. It’s very appealing to watch a competent detective character go head to head with a legitimately bad person and win through sheer working-joe legwork and psychological gamesmanship–too many TV detectives rely on magical leaps of logic that place them outside the realm of mortal men. Then again, too many shows have cops in them.
Because it amuses me and my friends, I’m drawing Columbo so I can put him on a box of cereal marked “Columb-Os”. Here is my progress so far–chalking this up to my 100-day project because I need to stop working for the day.
Color doodles in Illustrator
I got used to using Adobe Illustrator when I was a young newspaper graphic designer, using it to build all manner of ads, coupons, and promotional graphics. It’s really fun once you get the hang of it, would recommend.
(Oh man, I just had a horrible memory of listening to a much cooler graphic designer who worked at a skateboard apparel company tell me that he would routinely design 60-page catalogs in Adobe Illustrator, something it was not built to do and at the time not really capable of doing. [for reference, you should use a document design program like InDesign] I was appalled, and frankly, concerned for his health. I hope he’s doing better now.)
Anyway, I made some color doodles while trying to make this blog yesterday. I had fun and they look cute.
I hope to do more later, but we’ll see.
100-Day Project: Faces [1/100]
In the past, I’ve struggled to complete projects that takes longer than one sitting. But, life circumstances have changed a lot since COVID-19 began, and I feel it’s worth a try to build in a daily art practice with a “100-Day Project.” This will be a challenge, but if I succeed, well–that’ll be something!
I hope to learn more about the materials available to me, but my main goal is to find joy in the experiment, to connect with people in some way (remember other people? I miss other people.), and to practice staying organized.
If I am successful, and do not miss any days due to illness or whatever, I will complete this 100-day project on November 4, 2020.
I think it’s a bit serious in expression, but when in doubt, draw a self-portrait, right?
I used notebook paper, which doesn’t work very well with the toy watercolors, in the hope these low quality materials would help me keep from getting too precious with it.
This took about an hour, sitting in the shade on the deck we’ve built next to the trash cans. One down, 99 more to go!