Sunday, October 05, 2008

Boogie Old and New

Sometimes when I run out of ideas of things to draw I go back and look at some past ideas and see if I could come up with something new. I went back to the "Bedtime Boogie" idea and found a few unposted drawings and I came up with another character for a new 'rockabilly' section of the idea. I found some roughs and some finished or nearly finished development drawings for this idea that I thought I'd post.

As I said in my last post, I almost always draw with a ballpoint pen. I love the permanence of it and the fact that once you put a line down there is virtually no going back; you are committed. It forces you to think about what you are doing and where you are going with a drawing. Sometimes the image in my head is so clear that I can see it on the blank page and it's just a matter of tracing the thought image with the pen so others can see what I see, and sometimes I have the seed of an idea and I just play with shapes to build a character drawing.

Over the years I have developed a few techniques that work for me. A lot of the time I will dust the page with the tip of the pen and do a very light rough of what I want to draw. It lets me explore a few creative options before I commit to builting the line and finishing the drawing. Occasionally, I will do a rough or two to play with the composition and perspective, and then I will work from that to make a new finished drawing. It's not my favorite way to work because I find that the reworked drawing looks a bit stale. Either way I find the ballpoint pen a mighty fine tool to draw with. Enjoy.

The top one was the rough and the bottom is an unfinished drawing from the rough.


This is how I usually work. The top drawing was the pass where I roughed the drawing by dusting the pen lightly over the page, and the bottom is the finished result after I have built up the lines and added all my cross-hatching.

An alternate lighting idea that came after I finished the above drawing.

This is a new character for a "Rockabilly Bop" sequence in this idea.

1 Comments:

Blogger ANDY ZENG said...

Shawn! nice post!
btw, how's the work?
i done my first leica by using toonboom storyboard pro, check it out if u have time and leave me some comments. thx.

6:06 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home