Green Hell

Plugging Along

    The only piece of last week's work that's actually worth showing (aside from a few chibis I drew for my wife and mother. I don't know what it is about women, but damn, do they ever love chibis...).

   It's yet another cat girl. This time, though, I aimed for more of a bishōjo look. Not sure how successful the attempt was, but I'm fairly happy with the eyes and the shading. (I'm finally getting the hang of using the blending pen). 

More Progress (I Think...)

     My latest cat-girl. It's one of the few sketches I don't hate. (Like my stories, 90+% of my drawings end up in the garbage can or the fireplace.) 

Another Stroll Down Memory Lane (or Hogan's Alley)

 I first produced me pistols/
 and I then produced me rapier/
 Sayin, "Stand and deliver/ 
 For ye' are a bold deceiver...'



"Ya want some Tubby Custard? Well I got some Tubby Custard for ya, motherfucker!" 

"David is a very...troubled young man," says Harry to the new guy -- who promptly clocks out for lunch, and never returns. 
"Hey, Bean! I double-dog-dare you to drop the hammer!" Says Jerry. 
"This is gonna be cool!" says Mike. "Ever see what happens when a Black Talon hits a Teletubby?"
(This gives us all -- even me -- cause and pause for reflection. Apparently, Mike has actually seen what happens when a Black Talon hits a Teletubby. Beam me up, Scotty. This planet's gettin' weirder by the minute...) 



"Well, it ain't the most efficient way of disposing of a corpse, but I suppose it's environmentally friendly. At least what's left of the bastard will be recycled." 
"Just shaddap and find out what's snagging that wire, willya?" 



Eighteen and life to go... Well, not exactly. I'd just turned fifteen a month or two before my brother shot this one. We were living in a shoebox of a Reihenhaus in Rohrbach, Germany at the time. The photo is memorable for one reason only: Chris and I caught one of the best shows we'd ever seen that night -- Girlschool opening for Blackmore's Rainbow at the Rhein-Neckar Halle in Eppelheim.  

 



This isn't an old photo. It's a sketch I drew a few days ago. (It's a caricature, of course, but I take great pride in my near-photographic rendering of the ears.) I've entitled it "Chibi Drama-Queen." 

 And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't post a recipe or two?



The fried rice recipe is in an earlier post. The side dishes are green bean salad and eggplant relish.

1 lb. French-cut green beans
2 Thai chiles, seeded and minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2t chili oil
2T tamari soy sauce
2T palm vinegar
4T sesame oil
1t sugar
1 shallot,  minced

Blanch green beans in boiling, salted water until just crisp-tender. (No longer than five minutes.) Drain, refresh under cold water, and pat dry on paper towels. Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan, heat to boiling, and pour over beans. Let cool, and serve at room-temperature.

1 large eggplant
2t toasted sesame seeds
1T soy sauce
1T nuoc mam
1t brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1T palm or rice vinegar
1T lime juice 
2T vegetable or peanut oil 
2 Thai chiles, seeded and minced
Shredded mint, cilantro, and Thai basil, to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Prick eggplant with fork and roast until skin blisters and separates from flesh (40-45 minutes). Let cool. Peel and chop flesh. Combine remaining ingredients, mix well, and pour over eggplant. Serve chilled, or at room-temperature. 

Hiatus

No time to post for the last couple of weeks. I've been too busy finishing Book #3 (a meandering tale of murder, black magic, and revenge, set in a Shadowrun-influenced, dystopian future), writing book #4, writing an article for an upcoming project of MacYoung's, drawing, and playing guitar. (It's too early to tell, but I might -- just might -- cut an album before ol' Thanatos comes around for me.) 

Anyway, Maggie said that since my drawing has improved so much, I should take another shot at drawing us as Chibis. 



      She liked it so much, she's now using it as the profile photo on our Facebook page.  The eyes were my first experiment with a blending pen. I'm downright embarrassed to admit it, but I had no idea of what the thing was at first. I thought someone had fucked up and forgotten to add ink. Ya learn something new every day... 

   The next shots are: 1.) A disgustingly androgynous Bishie-boy vampire (I had to draw it. The wife told me I'd been drawing too many female characters lately. Then she called me a no-good, philandering, pighsit Irish son of a bitch, and accused me of having an affair); 2.) A pair of cat girls (exercises from Hart's Young Artists...); and another vaguely pornstar-looking bimbo. 

Measurable Progress

     Before and after shots of my latest Magical Girl. The proportions are getting better, and the hair is a vast improvement over what I've done in the past. For some reason, I'm halfway tempted to scrap the hentai project and stick to drawing real comics... 



     At this point, she's inked in with Sakura Pigma Sensei (TM) and Pigma Micron (TM) pens.



    And here's the finished product. It's a far cry from the stuff I was drawing back in October and November. 

Anal-Retentive Twatwaffles -- and the Girls Who Love Them (Updated)

     Cute enough to induce projectile vomiting, isn't it?
   
     My first attempt at drawing a male character. I didn't want to, but Maggie insisted. She said that I'd been drawing too many Goth/Vampire chicks and Magical Girls of late, and that she was worried about coming home from work one evening and finding me trying on her clothes. 

    Which is ridiculous, of course. Nothing she has fits me. I'm too wide through the chest and shoulders.

    Her next question was whether or not I was sure I'd only spent a night or two in the drunk-tank, rather than doing a lengthier stretch, and acquring a few unorthodox tastes in the process. 

     Anyway, here we are: a moody, self-absorbed, emo "bishie boy" (read: "fuckin' bishonen pussy") and his adoring, vivacious shojo girlfriend. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that this l'il romance is doomed? 

     The bishie is a modified exercise from Hart's Young Artists, while the shojo cutie (who is too cute, in my opinion. I'll be learning bishojo ASAP) is my own brainchild.
 

 

     Now the gal in the second pair doesn't look quite so adoring, does she? Such is the plight of a "good hearted woman in love with a good timin' man," as I suppose...  

Applying Color

    In the last post, I mentioned that the techniques for applying watercolor and marker were nearly the oppposite of painting with acrylics. Here's an example of what I meant. The figures below are Warhammer 40,000 Imperial Guardsmen (30mm high), which I painted back in '90 or thereabout. They're painted in acrylic -- base coat first, heavy shadows laid in with undiluted paint (and a very fine detail brush), lighter shadows in a diluted wash of the base color mixed with black, highlights drybrushed on in a lighter shade of the base color. The weapons were initially solid black, with a heavy drybrushing of gunmetal applied, followed by a much lighter drybrushing of silver.
    I applied the coats in that order.
    When coloring a drawing with marker, by way of comparison, it's necessary to go from lightest to darkest, and work around the highlights.


 

Jeepers, Creepers! Where'd You Get Those Peepers?

     Wow. Quite  a few hits on the 18th. I wonder if this means I'm destined for a Halliburton-built concentration camp.
     Last time I had that many hits in a single day, it was the result of a singularly hilarous practical joke I played upon a richly deserving mark. People who overestimate their own importance are so easy to fuck with, it's hardly a challenge... 

     Anyway, here are yesterday’s exercises.

    The first is yet another vampire chick. I’m happy with the eyes, and the hair is a step forward (hair is surprisingly difficult to draw), especially the color. She’s colored entirely in Tombow ™ pens, the brush-tips for the most part. Although I didn’t realize it at first, the Tombow pens are double-ended: one brush-tip and one fine point. Upon making this momentous discovery, I used the latter to sharpen the edges of the highlights and shadows.
    I also ended up using a technique I borrowed from one of my wife’s watercolor lesson books: putting in the highlights first, then the base color, and finally the shadows – a very different approach from the one I used for  painting miniatures with acrylics. Like watercolors, markers are translucent. This means that the lightest shades must be applied first, and worked around, lest they disappear.
The opacity of acrylics, contrariwise, allows the painter to apply the base color first, paint in the deep and contact-shadows with a darker, undiluted shade, add the lighter shadows with a diluted wash, and then dry-brush the highlights last. (Granted, miniatures are three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional, but the general principle still applies.)
    This brings me to a bit of digressive grousing.  I’m very happy with the lesson books I’ve bought, and I’m glad for the sheer variety of materials available nowadays. I do wish there was a single book that explained everything, though.  One title, for example, mentioned that when drawing faces, one should begin with a circle, divide it in half, and then quarter the lower half. A child’s chin is 1/8 to ¼ the circle’s diameter from the lower edge of said, while an adult’s is approximately 3/8 of the circle’s diameter below the lower edge. Very useful information, but the placement of the features is related in less detail.
    Open another book, and read on. This one mentions that the nose is placed half the distance between the eyebrows and the chin, while the mouth is placed halfway between the nose and chin. Lo and behold, this, too is useful information. But why must I dig through two separate books in order to learn both?
    I think the problem is that the authors are true experts. They’ve so thoroughly mastered their craft, and so thoroughly internalized details of this sort, they don’t even think about them. I wish that at times, they’d go “memory mining,” and put themselves in the position of a complete beginner. Despite the very high quality of the books I’m using, I’ve had to resort to inductive and deductive reasoning, intuition and experimentation in order to figure out a number of things.
   Another of my complaints concerns the death of information on traditional coloring. Most of the books include a page or two on coloring with markers, colored pencils, or watercolors – and an entire chapter on coloring with a computer, the assumption apparently being that I’ll scan my drawings and let the computer do the rest. I suppose I eventually will, but I’d rather learn the traditional way.
    This brings me to a digression within a digression. Some years ago, one of my drinking buddies was a cabinetmaker – a real, honest-to-God cabinetmaker. The only power tool he employed was a lathe. For everything else, he used a combination of traditional European and Asian techniques, and hand-tools: an old-fashioned auger rather than a drill or drill press, planes, and chisels and gouges rather than a router. His pieces were prohibitively expensive, but worth every penny. They were practically indistinguishable from the furniture I’d seen in various European castles and palaces during my boyhood. In short, the man was a true artist.
   That’s the approach I want to take. I want my work to be my work – not a machine’s. Call me a hopeless Luddite, but I think we’ve allowed technology to arrest our evolution, both as a species and as individuals. Instead of developing our human potential, we rely upon gadgets and gizmos for even the simplest tasks.  And how do we employ the free time these conveniences and labor-saving devices should, in theory, provide?
     “Nothing to do, and no time to do it,” as Horace wrote.
     End digressions.



   The second photo is my first attempt at drawing monsters. It’s a rendering of the beholder, from AD&D, and its equally nasty marine cousin, the Eye of the Deep. I was an avid (“fanatical” is probably a more accurate term) gamer when I was a kid, and I still have a soft-spot for old-style RPGs. Since I’ll have to draw monsters anyway, I thought I’d start with something that inspired me/brought back a few fond memories.

     The Beholder seemed like a fairly easy starting point (it's a sphere, fer feck's sake -- a Madball with eyestalks), and it was one of those monsters no one ever wanted to encounter, as half the party would end up dead or in the hurt locker. The Eye of the Deep is a limp-dicked (or rather, "limp-eyestalked") marine copy of the Beholder, but it gave me the chance to try drawing crab claws -- which I copied from a photo in a Chinese cookbook.


 

Fun With Overwork and Boredom

  Not much to report today. Only drew one picture, and it’s nothing spectacular. The only respect in which it demonstrates progress is in the eyes and skin-tone: I took the techniques I learned from Hart’s Midnight Monsters, and applied them with a warmer, more natural palette of colors. It was a valuable exercise, but the results aren't worth posting.

    The wife, bless her pointy little head, is ever the enterprising one. No kidding, by the way. Let an especially nasty storm pass through, and she’ll toss the chainsaw into the truck and drive around looking for fallen trees. (“Look, honey! I made a hundred bucks -- and got us a cord of firewood in the bargain!”)
     In keeping with her capitalist running-dog nature (and her infuriating habit of committing me to various projects and/or social functions –without consulting me beforehand), she’s been showing my drawings around. Now, believe it or not, we have people wanting me to draw their kids as manga characters (chibi, I’m guessing – they’re the cutest style), for money, even.  Two-and-a-half months’ experience, and I already have people willing to pay for my work. I must be doing something right.

    Hmmm. Perhaps I should have taken real art classes in high school and college, instead of just doodling in the margins of my notebooks…

    My wife’s nephew (who, being five years my stepson’s junior, is literally young enough to be my son) is coming to Atlanta for one music festival or another in a few months, and might be cutting his travel costs by crashing with us for a day or two. I gather that enterprise runs in that family: a single meal downtown costs more than a round-trip MARTA ticket from Atlanta to Roswell, and the hotel rooms are obscenely expensive. The kid’s a musician himself, so naturally, Maggie is insisting that we jam when he arrives.
     Whatever.
    For some reason, I’m having trouble imagining a twenty-five-year-old wanting to jam on late 60’s psychedelia, early Hawkwind, 70’s and ‘80s EuroMetal, punk, and grunge – but one never knows. Besides, I have to live with his aunt, which means running down to the music store and stocking up on strings, batteries, cables, etc. – and giving up what little free time I have left, for the sake of practicing daily. Owing to the sheer amount of time I’ve devoted to writing, reading, my day job, and learning to draw, I haven’t played seriously in months. I made it most of the way through “Purple Haze” today (only to discover that the Strat is in desperate need of restringing), but the only things I can play without even thinking about them are Priest’s “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight,” Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog,” Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” and “Paranoid,” and Hawkwind’s “Master of the Universe.”
    Wow! Maybe if I think super-hard, I’ll be able to remember a really  tough one – like “Louie, Louie,” “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Neunundneunzig Luftballons,” or even “Wild Thing.”
     I’m overdoing the self-mockery a tad, but gone are the glory days of my late twenties, during which I could play the intro to Gary Moore’s “End of the World,” and engage in vainglorious two-hand tapping, lewd and lascivious pelvic thrusting/ass shaking, and whammy-barring of a high and aggravated nature whilst holding the fucking guitar behind my neck.  If I tried to pull that shit off these days, I’d probably end up needing a truss, a back-brace, and prosthetic replacement surgery for my shoulder socket…

    If you enjoyed the post entitled “Teaser,” stay tuned for another preview. The story won’t be making it into Irish…, though. It’s already too long; so long, as a matter of fact, it might actually become book #4.

     

Bloodsucking Females

     Only had time for two drawings today. This first is (yet another) from Hart's Young Arists. The second is an experiment of sorts: my own concept, using new techniques I'm learning from yet another of Hart's books. (Have I mentioned that I love Hart's books?) 
     They're Goth/vampire types. The first is cutesy/gruesome, while the second is a little sexier, I think. 





    Now if you'll pardon me, I'm (un)dead tired. It's bedtime. 

Chickie of the Sea

     My version of the mermaid on page 123 of Christopher Hart’s Young Artists Draw Manga.
     I didn’t like the costume she was wearing (insofar as she was wearing a “costume”), so I borrowed bits and pieces from a few of the other workbooks I’m using.

     I’m not sure she’s a worthy followup to the Magical Girl I posted a day or two ago, but she doesn’t suck, if nothing else. She also gave me a chance to experiment with blending colors (back to the drawing board, in that respect), and to make a bit of progress on rendering blonde hair – a real pain in the ass, thus far. 



    

Plateau-Breaker

     Today's exercise -- and probably the best one yet. I borrowed the pose and facial expression from Hart's Young Artists..., but I hated the hairstyle and costume. The dress is from Hart's shojo lesson-book, the hair is adapted from a Star Blazers still (I haven't seen the show in years, but I think it's a character named "Starsha" or something like that, the gloves are a standard Magical Girl fashion accessory, and the fishnets are there because I'm an Irish-American male  a perpetually salivating, oversexed pervert.

     She's rendered on 11' x 14" Bristol paper (as usual), in Sakura pens (the detail lines), Sharpies (the larger black areas), and various Tombo (TM), Copic (TM), and Sargent Art (TM) brush pens. She's also the result of a DUI: Drawing Under the Inluence -- of early Hawkwind, in this case. Light a jasmine or sandalwood joss-stick, run a few choice discs through the player (Warrior on the Edge of Time, Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall of the Mountain Grill), and wonder why this fucking post is entirely in italics when I meant only to italicize the titles of the albums. 

     I'm very, very satisfied with this one, and with the instructional books I bought. When I began drawing, on Halloween, I never thought I'd be producing anything like this two months later. And I think I'm starting to fall in love with my own sketch. Talk about Pygmalion! Jaysus...