More ink

I drew some of these while watching movies-- "Pale Rider", "Blood of Dracula", and "Baby Doll". I think I drew directly in ink for all.





I wish I was better at this type of drawing scenes from our everyday life. Anthony Z is the master; I just humbly follow his lead...





"Blood of Dracula"! I think this was a Hammer film from 1958. Maybe I should draw more Halloween themed stuff and post it this month?



This was a frame I re-drew in ink, from a vampire movie I worked on called "Let Me In". After I saw it, I thought "why didn't I light the scene like that in my crappy storyboards?" I remember drawing that scene on the airplane back from New Mexico. I was drawing in a very light, tentative pencil line. I am trying to stop that bad habit...
Making weak drawings like that makes me feel ashamed like the frame below from Woody Allen's "Crimes & Misdemeanors"!




Some babe from TV. I kinda changed her into a spy girl from a 60's movie or something. I have never been very good at drawing pretty women. Gotta practice drawing the babes... Eric Ramsey is the master; I just humbly follow!




I actually got a sorta likeness of the great Karl Malden. I guess with a nose and hairline like that it shouldn't be too difficult.



Not a great drawing, but I am trying to force myself to "draw what I see, not what I think I see" (thanks Spark for that advice). In this case I was going to be timid about using black for the windows and doors. Not even sure why, but here I fought it!


Lovely Los Angeles, California skyline.


Trying to get a Noel Sickles type effect for the trees, using a pen rather than a brush.


The more finished drawing I actually penciled out roughly, then inked.

Back in Black

Well, I have badly neglected this poor sketchblog, but the good news is that the last post did get me hired on Spielberg's new film Warhorse. So I spent a few months being forced to draw horses from my head! I can't show any of that work, but here are several horses in ink. Some from my head, a few I copied from Toth or Kubert.





I really want to learn how to ink better, and use stronger blacks in my drawings. My friend Mike Vosburg talked me into trying out the Noel Sickles technique of spotting the blacks first, then finish with as few lines as possible.



Mike drew this at lunch in about 30 seconds, directly with an old sharpee!









Some of these I inked with just a double tipped sharpee. Some with a chinese inkdrush I got for cheap -- probably at Kunikoya (sp?) bookstore in Japantown, downtown Los Angeles.




Copied these from Toth's Zorro, I think.

New Horses

More sketchbook horses. Some copied from photos, or other artists (Joe Kubert, Jean Giruad, Victor De La Fuente, Sam Savitt). Some from my head.

I try to get to life drawing workshops when I can. It often reminds my how shaky my anatomical knowledge is, so every once in a while I copy from my books. The color keeps it interesting...

I wish I'd gotten my head around this stuff a long time ago...



Trying to get my head around a motorcycle I had to draw. This was when I first started working 100% digitally on the Cintiq, using Painter. Now I use photoshop, but I still love / hate Painter! I keep going back to it.


I do better when I give in to cartooning, instead of trying to draw more accurately. Gotta remember that.


I was fooling around with Painter and somehow got the idea to draw my friend Gerald Forton from memory. I really like cartooning and getting a likeness if I can, but it only happens once in a while.

Roman on horseback.

This is the first decent horse I've ever drawn from imagination. Woohoo! I like it, but I bet I'll look at it sometime in the future and find some fault I can't see right now.

Dec / Jan

I did this gag newspaper page instead of our usual holiday card, since we couldn't get the kids to stand still for a picture. I grew up looking at all the great early Mad Magazine artists' spoofs of print culture, so this was fun. Long live Will Elder!



I'm still copying from my horse drawing books. I got a great cheap brush pen in Chinatown (L.A.). After a bunch of scut work copying horses, I rewarded myself with some inking.



I decided to start cropping in on decent drawings if the rest of the page sucks... Why didn't I do this before?



I keep trying to draw directly, without any guidelines, or underdrawing, and try new tools. This was a 4B or 6B woodless pencil on so so paper.



I make a lot of little doodles and false starts drawing the kids. Here I actually made a good little drawing, then a bad one (cropped out). I had to include the horse head because it looks good to me.



I seem stuck on this idea that I have to learn to draw from life with an accurate but alive line. Sometimes it works like this, but it usually is a very controlled picture. I can dress it up with some watercolor, and I like the results, but I think I need to start working with value more. Plus, drawing with only line is a hard way to go.

Here I'm just copying the mighty Jean Giraud, or GIR, or Moebius.




It's funny that the French outdid us with the Western comics. Vive La France!


My friend Mike Vosburg has helped me a lot with my drawing. He complimented me on this, so I've included it.

Horses, etc.

I learned to appreciate artists who can really draw horses when I worked with my friend Gerald Forton - I met him on a job and watched as he drew perfect horses in action straight in ink, no under drawing! (Here is a pic of him in his studio). It was humbling then, and still is as I try to steal an hour most nights to finally learn this stuff.

This diagrammatic drawing is boring and painful, but I included it for the students out there (isn't that all of us? You can't avoid this stuff). I didn't get a good art education, so copying (and drawing from life) has been critical to me.
I can't actually draw a horse this well. These are all copied from the great drawings in three excellent books on animal drawing: The Art of Animal drawing, by Ken Hultgren, How To Draw Animals, by Jack Hamm, and How To draw Animals, by the Famous Artists School. One of these days I hope to find some time to draw at the local horse stables...

The FAC book has some drawings by the great Harold Von Schmidt, who has somehow ended up mostly forgotten compared with Cornwell, Loomis, etc. He was a mighty talent.
Jack Hamm just couldn't draw as well as those fine illustrators, but he had a talent for teaching, and he managed to publish a few thin books that cover territory almost no one else did at the time.
Ken Hultgren worked at Disney, and could really draw animals!

I switched from Prisma pencil to charcoal - not digging the results.

This page was a lousy likeness of the model, so I tried to use the rest of the paper.

Another bad likeness of a different model - I'm seeing a pattern here...

This one actually kind of looks like the model! Not gonna mess up the page with a bunch of horse butts!