Junk Drawer...

I found this sketchbook on my bookshelf this morning. I have no recollection of a) buying it or b) doodling any of the sketches inside. Weird. I guess this goes back awhile, as the first page was a "To Do" list from A.P.E. 2005. Anyway, I scanned in the bits and pieces that weren't COMPLETELY embarrassing (meaning, I skipped the first 10-20 pages entirely) and composited them into this:



Some of it's kind of hard to see, and other places have dark grey shadows in the corners. All of that is a result of the book spine not properly fitting on the scanner.


This stuff here is kind of a hodge podge of junk I had laying around. A lot of it is comprised of the tiny thumbnail sketches I've been basing my recent Illustrator pieces off of, others are doodles I scanned with that intention, but ultimately bailed on or never got around to.



And finally, this was another Weekly Sketch Group thing I did for PencilJack, but never posted here.



That's supposed to be the 1939 incarnation of Batman, hence the purple gloves and the smooth, refreshing taste of a cigarette after whupping some assholes'...asshole. Seeing as how I drew it, this struggle, of course, took place off camera and in no discernable environment whatsoever.

You live your life like a (Black) Canary in a coal mine...

Batman Beyond and Black Canary for the Weekly Sketch Group over at Pencil Jack. Is it still a sketch if it takes you something like SIX FUCKING HOURS? I've seriously become so dependent on fixing shit in the computer that I barely draw more than a stick figure these days. Fuck, I don't know if I'm even capable of truly drawing any more. This was fun though, and even if the results kinda look like warmed over ass, hey, I found a half-tone brush!

Ain't That A Peach...

Don't really know what I was doing here...



Am I gay?

Widow Maker...

Black Widow/E-Surance mascot. This was going to be for the Weekly Sketch Group on PencilJack, but I was too embarrassed to post it. I tried to go for the solid color approach that worked out alright on the pirate chick I posted earlier, but the further along I got, the more I realized I had no idea how to light this fucking thing. So I did what any god fearing American would do, I quit! I really need to spend some time learning about color and lighting, it's killed enough of my projects that I should start swapping out the word "color" with "AIDS."

Redraw #1

I'm going to indulge myself on the "blog" part of the sketchblog for this post. Sorry...

I was going through the shit in my Photobucket account today, probably the first time I've looked at any of it in years. It's like a time capsule that when you open it, a fist flies out and punches you right in the face. Seriously though, it was kind of nostalgic, and a little surreal. I don't do ANYTHING the same way any more. I used to work mainly in pencil and Micron, whereas nowadays I do a quick sketch in a red animators lead at best, and then do most of the work in the computer. Previously, I favored straight lines and sharp angles, now I try to keep things as soft and round as possible. I put thick black outlines on everything, until I eventually wised up to the fact that doing so flattens everything out and kills any sense of depth. My coloring is still atrocious, but a few years ago, I handled everything with the airbrush tool in Photoshop, giving all my stuff a smudgy, dirty look. Today, I mostly stick to big blocks of color, and while I admit that coloring is one of my biggest weaknesses (still, I can't resist doing it), I think my current technique is at least cleaner. I used to hide the things I couldn't draw, or leave them out completely, as is clearly demonstrated in the following image. All of my figures wore big, baggy pants because I had no clue how to draw legs. I was influenced by anime and manga. I shied away from women even more than I do in real life. Unless I was feeling particularly adventurous, I drew strictly head on, or in profile, with hardly any action at all. I mean, I was a disaster. Shit, back then I used to sign my name to my drawings, instead of the little "diamond" symbol I made that I use now. SO MUCH CHANGE.

It's really inspired me to go back and redraw some of that garbage. Hopefully to see some improvement (I could wipe my ass with most of this stuff and improve it tenfold), but also as an experiment to see how I'd approach the same subject the way I draw now. First up...


I remember how unusually proud I was of this when I first did it. I drew a girl! I drew a girl in 3/4 view! This was also one of the first things I ever colored in Photoshop. As soon as it was done I went flying off to conceptart.org to post it... WHERE. I. GOT. KILLED. "Her nose is too big. Her head is too big. What's up with her lips? She has the neck of a giraffe. You call that a coloring job? Motherfucker, she has an ADAM'S APPLE!" It was one of the first (soon to be many) times I was evicerated on a public art forum. The feeble minds of these godless savages were too infantile to recognize the greatness I had lain before them! I probably made the most progress I've ever made during my early days on conceptart, PencilJack and The Drawingboard, simply because I had my ass handed to me so often, and I was so embarrassed, that I HAD to practice to avoid further flogging. It was awesome.

I'm well aware I'll never be known as a pin up artist. I'm just not very good at drawing women. But at least now I'm not scared of them, and the fact that you can (usually) tell when I'm trying to depict the fairer sex is a MARKED improvement from past efforts. The 2009 version is far, far from great, but I do think it's at least better. I got pretty lazy on the pigtails and feathers, my coloring is wack, I wish I hadn't overshadowed under the jaw, and I'm not sure my proportions are accurate. All that said, no adams apple=WIN! Progress has been made! The composition sucks, but I wanted to keep this as close to the O.G. as possible. My main goal was just to draw less of a circus freak, not to make a print or anything.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I needed to exercise the heebie jeebies I got browsing through those old drawings. I'm not trying to imply I'm king shit now or anything, or even that I'm any good at all, but I did need to prove to myself that I've made some strides, however small.

I labled this post with a #1 hoping that it will motivate me to do more. Unfortunately, one old habit I've never broken is my incredible, contemptuously disgusting laziness.

Sorry for the long post.

Booty!

Believe it or not, this was my own Omar Little doodle that got further and further away from me until it retained literally nothing from the original. Well, aside from the skin tone. And her propensity for whistling "The Farmer in the Dell" before robbing drug dealers.

I tried something new here, by shying away from lines and attempting straight color blocking. Also new, a background! Not so new is how half-assed of a job I did on it.



Click to enlarge, as it's way too big to fit in-line in the post. I don't want you to miss all of the intricate detail I neglected to put in it.

I totally drew all of this in just one day...

EXPLOSION OF PRODUCTIVITY !!!

(click to big ups)

I wish. Actually, this is all the scraps I had floating around on my clipboard. Some of it from a week ago, some from a few months ago, some from the dawn of creation (that brown paper bag puppet that looks like a bear is a figure study of God himself). I really hope to have some time to pick up the pencil again over the summer.

Back to the old standbys...

Jesus Christ I'm RUSTY.

Me So Horny...

Webdesign element I'm abandoning because it looked like warmed over shit.


A masculine looking devil woman. I think the FBI could generate a psychological profile of significant heft on me based on just this little doodle.

A cornicopia of porno-dope-fo-ya...

Whoops! Fooled you! That name is much more titillating than what I'm actually delivering: nothing but random sketch shizz from the last week and a half or so.



The random photographs are in there because I draw a lot of this shit on work meeting hand outs, and my boss likes to tack on the odd pictures she finds when googling the various topics we'll be discussing. Some of my doodles overlap the photos, so the photos are included here as well. Why didn't I just leave out the scribbles that were connected to pictures? Because every single line I make is amazing, and shouldn't be wasted.

Eye Rape...

Straight up, this is just total shit:



That was my attempt at an unsolicited caricature of my sister. Next time I'll save myself two hours and just say "Hey, want to see a caricature of you I made?" then I'll punch her right in the mouth. Her huge, ghastly, duck lipped mouth, according to what I've represented here. This isn't even a caricature, it's candy colored cartoon slander. It's libel.

That said, I'm going to make an effort to post more out and out garbage here. I know I trash talk my own work all the time, but speaking candidly (meaning, arrogantly), a lot of the stuff I deem failures I secretly am able to find small victories in. Like that "sasquatch" I posted a month back. I mean, it doesn't look like sasquatch (werewolf Hulk Hogan yadda yadda), but I think it's an overall solidly constructed face. It's like, if I made you a shit sandwich, yeah, it's probably going to be fucking disgusting and hopefully you're not going to want to eat it, but if it's got two slices of bread, some lettuce, perhaps a little provolone, I dunno, maybe an olive speared to the top with a toothpick, I still succeeded in executing the basic concept of a sandwich, right? Of course, it's an unfortunate deal breaker that it's got my shit in it, but even if I can't find my car, I'm still in the right parking lot. I think my astute and eloquently worded analogy has gotten my point across. Anyway, I want to post more stuff like this that just sucks out loud. Like, has no redeeming value whatsoever. Mostly to artificially inflate my post count by showing 9/10 of the stuff I actually draw, but also to hopefully stop worrying about presenting crap an allowing myself to move outside my comfort zone.

As an added bonus side effect, maybe you all will come to realize that I am not an infallible art god, and am instead just really, really, supernaturally good.

Blahsome!

Another girl. I'm not confident about those proportions. I think the head may be too large, and the legs are probably too short. We'll chalk that up to the irrefutable catch all excuse of "style." I also think there's some wackiness going on in the collarbone and shoulder areas. On the plus side, I kinda like the way the strands of hair turned out. Not the big, flippy/curly clumps, just the loose strands. I'll have to incorporate those into something that's not garbage at some point.




-Todd

Mermanarchy!

More Illustrator/Photoshop dicking around. I figured I had kind of a nautical theme going with the squid thing and pirate dude, so here's a mermaid, that, knowing me, probably looks like a dude. I got a little ambitious on the color, using gradients and other madness I have no real understanding of. Something looks a little off when I flip the image in Photoshop, but I can't quite figure out what that is exactly...

Pirates of the AIRribbean! Har.

Another in the kind of air pirates theme we seem to have going now, for some reason. Not that I'm complaining. I was aiming for Ass Pirates, but I'm willing to compromise and get half of what I want.




I don't even know what I'm talking about most days any more.

This one's so wide, I had to shrink the preview image down a lot to get it to fit. As always, click for the bigger version.

Airship mechanic?

I feel like those arms are the mayors of Wonkytown, the face is at least a 6 pack away from attractiveness, and the wrench is all out of perspective, but I'm not positive about any of that. I did use reference for this, so it should have been cake to fix those issues, but the photograph was dimly lit and hard to make out detail in. Ah well, you win some, I'm handsome.



Original sketch.



Off topic, but while I haven't exactly been setting the group blog a blaze, I AM happy to see that looking back I've been a lot more consistent about trying to contribute the last couple of months. I'm going to go ahead and give myself a tiny bit of credit for actually somewhat sticking to at least ONE project for once.

I'm an ass.

Forf o' Jooleye!

I know I bitch about this all the time, but goddamn do I wish I could draw girls. I bought this book on 50's pinup art the other day, as well as the 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons collection (it weighs as much as Hugh Hefner) and I think it would be awesome to be a cheesecake pinup artist. I've been working on it a lot lately and it's not coming any easier to me. I need to learn to do loose, fluid curves and delicate faces. Learning some stock poses would also be nice. These are pretty "meh", but I like showing my garbage so Kevin doesn't kill himself. ;)



That left arm looks broken. I don't know why I didn't catch that before I inked it.



I know those color schemes are wack. I used an online color scheme generator to save time (I didn't get started on these until almost 5am).

Have a good 4th of July. Don't blow your dicks off with firecrackers.

5.26

I haven't had enough time to myself lately to get on the computer at home and play with PS/tablet, so, back to basics! Ballpoint, non-repro pencil, Pitt pens (fuck Micron) etc. I was able to talk my job into getting me a scanner as a "work expense" so now I can scan the stuff I draw while I'm here. From this week:

5.17

Huzzah!



Reference is for suckas! Look, I even threw a CHAIR in that biotch!

....I think I need a new "background" shtick.

....Is her head too big?

EDIT: I thought it might be fun to sort of compare notes, so I threw together this little thing that documents how I've been approaching sketching in Photoshop. If any of you sees something I could do to improve, can make suggestions/recommendations, or want to critique some crucial error I'm making in my process, I'd love to hear it. Fuck, if you want to make your own to share, EVEN BETTER!

My Process!

{blah blah blah, filler text because that link is really hard to notice when it's at the bottom of the post}

5.12

Still rockin' the laydays...



...Also, still drawing them. BOOYAH! Blindsided by hilarity!

5.7

Tonights experiments, for better or worse. I really wish I felt more confident controlling the stylus. Right now it's not much more manageable than a mouse, which is why I have to resort to these lazy ass compositions. Luckily, I possess two important character traits: lazer eyes, and, more importantly, stick-to-it-iveness!