#190

This blog was feeling lonely so i thought i'd post this here rather than on the tumblr. for the last couple of evenings i've been drawing girls. some with more reference, some less so. people seemed to really like the last drawing i posted on tumblr and this is kind of different which is basically the reason im holding off posting all of this over there.

i've never been good at drawing girls so i've practiced drawing them a lot in the last year or so. I feel like anatomically I'm getting there although obviously my whole approach to art is a bit bad so i dont know if i can really say that. inspiration-wise these are fuelled by Dave Cooper and Chris Sanders' work - both pretty cheesecakey artists but they sorta celebrate some elements of female body types that i think are underrepresented. I think my favourite here is the girl on the left considering didn't really reference the pose as a whole, although I also really like the running girl. Trying to use weird hairstyles to see how far i can push it before they just look like dudes. also i like weird/short hairstyles. keen for feedback on whether these are weird/shit.

#188

My go at the DAC shape challenge I found here. I love these, always fun to see the kind of weird stuff people come up with.

I took a lot of liberties with negative space and stuff but I don't think it matters too much. I also drew a lot of big hands. I guess I just like big hands! I don't like self-harm but I drew that too. Sorry!

#186

sketch of Bogart that I did that I sort of like. referenced from here (I put a coupla years on him, sorry Humph)

i don’t know if it’s to do with the limitation to monochrome or just the styles of the time but actors of this era had some really awesome faces. John K always goes on about kirk douglas (amazingly sent up by dave stoten with audio from frank gorshin here), and I’ve also seen it mentioned Kurosawa had a real knack for picking superb mugs.

trying to think of the great countenances of today… Willem Dafoe’s pretty good. i might draw him tomorrow.

#183

linework for a D&D thing. still faffing with colour.

#182

Gitaroo Man is a really good game from the tail end of that era when the popularity of Parappa The Rapper spawned a bunch of weird japanese rhythm action games with unusual artstyles, and for my money it’s the best of the bunch. This was before Guitar Hero made tons of money and turned all modern music games into glorified karaoke machines. The way the game uses the PS2 controller is really weird but once you get into it it’s amazing. Play it if you ever get the chance! This was fun to draw, I tried to push the perspective a little more than i usually do with mixed results. His torso is at a funny kind of angle but I don’t really mind it too much.

#22

doodlin doodlin every day im doodlin

drawing is like this weird thing where you memorise a library of shapes and symbols and reproduce them over and over again, often in the same formations.

#21

KBSPLBMSSHHhhh

#20

#19

continuing the dinosaur-themed requests from last night - a velociraptor playing a violin. I'd almost forgotten how painfully stiff my comics can be!

as suggested by @BenjaminTobitt.

#18

as much as attempting accurate drawing from reference/life is sorta fun in a masochistic way, it can be fucking difficult and boring. hence - dinosaur. suggested by @themanfrowns on twitter, who, in addition to making many insightful tweets and retweets, has a really good blog where he reviews and waxes lyrical on all sorts of shit. if you're reading this - go read it, you'll probably like it.

#16

I... I think i have a frog problem

seriously though i've just been kinda busy the last few nights, regular posting will resume shortly

#15

more frawg.

#14

missed a drawing yesterday so I'm posting this. whoops!

#12

more characters. tried to design her nude using the reference I've been working with and then "clothe" her. I like the outfit, anyway. The nude body's a bit weird, it looks a bit twisted, like the torso's pointing in one direction and the legs another... but the vagueness of the clothes sort of evens it out. Also, notice - no hands! I like her face/hair though.

Her name's Anke, she's the daughter of a prosperous landowner. The symbol you can see on her apron is something like a family crest, their estate is an ancient hill fort smack in the middle of a forest.

#7

Talking with one of my friends about sexy cartoon ladies and sort of promised I'd try my hand at it again, trying to stay in the same style I've been drawing the other stuff. Drawing women has been something I've always wanted to be good at but never really cracked. Men just seem like the default to me, women have these wildly variable shapes and contours that are so satisfying to see someone bring to life.

I vaguely like the one on the bottom left because there's an actual shape to her face in that pose. I think I was trying to make a pretty girl with a long nose but with a round, kinda chubby face. I think the contrast has potential but I need to practice from reference some.

So prepare for some practice sketches for the next few days!

#6

Einar, Espen's father and star of a comic I made. Trying to write a good brofist dad sort of character without him just being generic and predictable.

#5

#4

Ulf expressions. bit of a cop-out tonight; I was out in london with my dad. tomorrow I will have done more, hopefully. I don't really like these.

#3

more espen. the second syllable is a corruption of "bjorn" (I believe), which means "bear". the name as a whole means something like "god bear". also: hooray! no pixelly shit.

#2

Espen and his grandfather Ulf. Espen's this character I've been doodling for a while to see if it's even possible for me to design a good protagonist, he started off as a weird pointy-hatted-hero-ish character and I've just been meandering about with him aimlessly with this sort of norwegian flavour in mind. What I had before was a little too much like Luke Pearson's Hilda Folk (which I could probably put down to unconscious emulation) so I kind of feel like making the character a bit of a dick now and less of a cute little optimistic guy.

I was considering putting a rant about a specific kind of cutesyness in contemporary illustration here but I think me talking shit about things is in most instances ill-advised, given my lack of experience. It's funny how much of a shrivelled little raisin of contempt I am, I'm hoping that somehow I can play it off as some kind of charming misanthropy and people will like the idea of this comic author/artist that hates everything (you may well have worked this out already).

edit: I really need to get out of the habit of this but I kinda prefer the B&W version still: