Look who I found gazing at me from a page full of otherwise noisy doodles I did somewhere in ’95:
Blew it up at 180%, added some color. Maybe it’ll cheer him up a bit…
Category: Drawings (Page 12 of 19)
Had to go up to the attic this morning to have a look at our boiler. While mucking around in semi-darkness upthere, I rediscovered a folder with drawings I did “way back when”. Here’s a first selection — more to follow…
The pitch: it’s an oracle kind of a guy with a bizarre looking beard who takes on an elf-like androgynous creature with really funny pants! Don’t ask me why but the idea never took off.
This started out as a Walter Matthau portrait I think. The resemblance is still there sorta-kinda, but even though it’s not “spot on”, I liked the lines on this one.
As promised: partial nudity! Why “Dang Ho”? Beats me.
I was asked recently about the tools I use to sketch ‘n doodle. Well I tend to stick to the bare necessities: an HB2 pencil, a Conté pen, an eraser.
– The HB2 pencil: right in the middle between overly soft and annoyingly hard. Who uses the H-range pencils except for architects and interior decorators anyway? Good for setting up the general scene of an elaborate illustration.
– The Conté pen: it’s cheap, it’s light, it has a nice direct grip and feel on grainy paper. Versatile in that it lets you doodle in super-fine-line crosshatching modus as well as thick-line frenzy. Plus you can replace the pen tip at any time. Downside: you need to carry along a flask of indian ink to wherever it is you want to draw. Doing so tends to be rather conspicuous. People will notice your ink dipping and their facial expression will radiate “what does he think he’s the next Leonardo Da Vinci?”, combined with “well I better look my best then”.
– The Artline “Drawing System” 0.2 pen. Perfect for quick sketching. For one thing, you don’t have to have the ink dipping thing going. Using it while sketching tends to make your subjects believe that you are in some way or another, engaged in work-related business. Little do they know!
– The Pelikan Eraser: it’s an eraser, what can I say. It, like, erases things; and it’s pretty good at it too.
Me, an art supplies fetishist though? Naah.
So I got bored at the office yesterday and played around a little with Sketch Swap. The idea is simple but fun: you draw a sketch, submit it, and in return you get a sketch made by somebody else. When I submitted mine, I wondered who was going to receive my little doodle. Behold the magic of the internet, dear reader, as the guy who received it, posted about it on his weblog! What are the odds to that…
So I did a commissioned illustration for The Green Horns. It is unclear at this point whether the group actually likes the drawing, but I thought I’d present you with my modus operandi anyway. See the Flickr set here…
Update: approved!