WHEN A FRIEND asks for help I usually never ever ask back for understanding - that I might be busy with something else or that there are 'other priorities'. I simply help and that's it.
In this case, a short comic drawn for someone as a present [by that friend of mine] needed my penciled input on a couple of pages plus cover. I did the best job I could do at the moment, providing the geezer with enough material to work on and add his inks.
The cover was a special case - we wanted to try the uninked drawing treated with PhotoShop. So I got an idea after I was told what should be on the cover [a nuclear explosion, sexy voluptuous dominatrix kind of a girl with nasty gun leaning on the head of a Humpty Dumpty shaped boyfriend], grabbed a plate from the kitchen shelf and made a circular panel inside which I penciled-in the scene with a 2B soft lead inside Caran D'Ache mechanical lead holder.
My friend Gotze B. did a TERRIFIC colouring job that I don't have saved - yet. I hope I'll manage to post it soon-ish.
The additional fershlugginer 2009/04/caricature-tutorials-by-mads-tom.htmlwritten after the basic URL thingamajig serves the purpose to take you to Tom Richmond's absolutelly unavoidable Portrait Drawing Adventure. It needs to be seen to be believed..!
And trust me - I know what I'm talking about: I earn my everyday bread by drawing a regular Sunday strip page for Serbian PRESS in the vein of MAD parodies [the old school of Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres, George Woodbridge, Jack Davis...] and attempting to draw political 'celebrities' [yup, I'm NOT dabblin' with the good ol' showbiz...] and make my scrawled images look like the persons they're supposed to represent -- oboy, it's teeth pulling.
Even worse...
Tom has his own sitehttp://www.tomrichmond.com/home.phpand it's chock-full of the whole caboodle of goodies - drawing tutorials included.
Be good to yourselves, bookmark the links I've just shared with you and be happy to have me to share this knowledge with you.
Damn -- some people draw too good for their own good ...
MISS DANA HAMM shares her surname with one of my bass-playing idols, incomparable Stu Hamm. As far as I know, they're NOT related.
When I asked her once upon a time for her permission to delineate her in a situation dear to me [exuberant display of beauty, wild animal presence -- like in the old-school illos with beauties and beasts], she didn't hesitate to grant it to me -- even more, she honoured me with including the following drawing on her own myspace site.
I am grateful for her compliments. But deep inside, I felt that I could have done more -- better -- bolder.
Never ever did I dare to even attempt to draw her again, neither form memory nor by using her photo for 'straight reference', the old-school way, the GlamourPuss way.
Hard 3H pencil lead was applied for underdrawing; PILOT drawing pens [markers] and PENTEL fountain brush for inking.
Darn -- will have to do something with classical nibs dipped in good old waterproof ink and sable brushes to do justice to the chosen models..!
IT HAS JUST occurred to me that I haven't mentioned who is the actual beauty featured... She does exist indeed and she is a musician [bassistesse, no less] who also practises healthy lifestyle, models and competes in the fitness arena. Her name is Crystal Fawn and can be found on myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/crystalfawnfitness and http://www.myspace.com/featuredonfridays
Please, check our her sites.
For today I am submitting another attempt to delineate her.
Standard procedure discussed in the previous post.
For the polka-dot pattern on her bikini I didn't dare to use the correction pen with opaque white fluid, fearing it'll give me a messy result. Instead, I drew carefully wee circles and - filled the black away with marker pen. I reckon it was STABILO brand. Everything else was done over the 2B pencilled underdrawing with PILOT fibretip pens.
JUST REMEMBERED CERTAIN drawings I did -- well, some time ago... Before I became aware that Dave Sim will make a splash with Glamourpussy series as the love letter to the 'photo-realistic comic strips' of yesteryear, I got an urge to try to do it the way I've assumed it could be done. Not by making my own strip in the vein of greats like Alex Raymond, Warren Tufts, Stan Drake, Neal Adams, Al Williamson, Ken Bald, John Prentice, Alden McWilliams ... or even Dave Sim himself... only by giving it a try with several illustrations of beautiful women I've made contacts with on myspace. Don't get me wrong -- I've always been well informed, knew that certain artists use photo reference to make their drawn results more credible etc. Some relied on photos faintly, some totally; some needed photographs for documentation -- and some to create it all from scratch, transforming one medium into a totally different context and artistic result.
What I wasn't sure of at all was -- how the Hell did they do it..? Did they cut the newspaper or magazine photos out for their 'morgue' [documentation in folders] or they took snapshots staged according to their 'directorial' vision [almost like creators of 'fumetti' - photostrips]..? Or was it a combination of ALL of it, and then some more..?
Then -- did they just look at those photographs/snapshots, eye-balling them like some kind of 'model' to draw directly onto the cardstock where finished artwork will appear, or on separate sheets of paper to be celaned-up by tracing onto the mentioned cardstock..? Or did they do it like Mr. Sim does it on the shown youtube video?
Nevertheless, being adventurous and curious I first wrote emails to couple of the prominent ladies of my choice on myspace and, after getting their permissions, I decided which pictures were to wind up transformed into the drawings.
Bear in mind that naturalism - much better definition for what is usually called 'realism' - was never my forte. My earlier attempts with 'eyeballing' photos whilst attempting to draw upon them bore rather sour-ish fruits... So I guessed that MAYBE using the tracing paper is a good start! Therefore I've printed out the chosen photographs taken from the ladies' myspace[s], laid a sheet of tracing paper over the photo[s] and - traced away the best way possible. I used a very thin marker, omitting intuitivelly what I assumed is to be omitted, stressing what I thought needs to be stressed and so on.
The finished result was far away from what I wanted to achieve, but no worries... The next stage was my embellishing treatment of those tracings, forgetting that they were based on photos and treating them as rough sketches in need of a light-table refinement and tightening. In this case, I've used a pad of layout paper - quite thin and transparent, but white, sort-of-opaque and durable enough for a hard 3H pencil interventions. So I lightly transferred SHAPES of the drawn subjects, not contoured the drawings beneath, the same way as I'd have done it on thicker cardstock over a shiny surface of a light box.
After finishing as preciselly as It was humanly possible [for me at least] the transfer, I've tightened the drawings with a quite soft 2B lead in a mechanical Caran D'Ache pencil.
Then they became ready for inking which was done with FABER CASTELL PITT markers and PENTEL fountain brush.
Suffice to say, I was quite impressed with my achievements -- for a time being. Then I realised that lots and lots of hard work at improving my drawing skills is needed even for the process some might call 'ordinary tracing'.
Instead of my conclusion, PLEASE listen carefully what Dave Sim says whilst demonstrating what and how he draws and pay attention to the segment towards the end when he re-tells the Al Williamson anecdote.
