Acheulean Beatboard

Piece from almost a year ago. Posted on the Instagram account back then; did a couple slight revisions the meanwhile, mostly having to do with just balancing the faces and head shapes surprisingly enough. (I can see why most artists avoid doing the downward-angled head at a slight turn from center. I think though that this was drawn before I had a more solid undersketch system down, or of establishing the feature distances on a character's face.)

Acheulean Wide Shot plus Works In Progress

Newer drawings of an old idea, from an old book, on even older subject material.

...Yes, that made perfect sense.

Dug up an old story idea after having gotten a couple of books illustrated by Zdeněk Burian. Fun stuff to look at if you're into the magic of primal stories and wildlife.

(Simplified color version, minus the filtered light in the background.)

And a couple of WIPs based off the same theme:

~ Color Studies, or: Comic Panel Procrastination... ~


Wanted to do some studies in color. These are around the Golden Hour, sunset. I have another set of panels set during mid-day; I'll post those next time. The negative space is presumably for word bubbles. The panel layout was kind of an after-thought.

I'm noticing that I need to open up my character expression vocabulary a little more, give them a bigger variety of emotions and expressions. As is, I'm tending to start these scenarios or scenes with the introductory shot of someone looking dire or morose. I blame Russian novels.

Besides this, I need to work more on being able to pace a scene out, find where to bring the emotional level up during an interaction between characters. Plus, there are more than a few ways to make a scene interesting without having to resort to yelling and/or violence. I blame Tarantino* and whoever made Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

(*Although he's gotten better. Reservoir Dogs is the only one that I've seen that's annoying in that respect.)

............

Something from the sketchbook this past week:On a side note: Fabric softener is probably one of the best inventions of the modern world.

~ New Years' Sketch Resolutions... ~

... Resolution - other than to make better scans of my sketchbook - is to actually get better at sketching all around: composition, lighting, human form, etc. To really loosen up, even in the more realistic pieces, if possible. (Looking at the above, I've got some ways to go on that front.)

Claire Wendling's been known to completely redraw a sketch from scratch several times over until the look and feel of the thing catches the balance she's looking for. Good idea... another reason why I shouldn't run off posting anything I've done several months remove, just to look like I'm making progress.

Looking at the first color sketch-up I did of the Wehrmacht characters above (the post before this one, below)... well, was done several months ago. Caca. Hence the redraw above from scratch. As much of an excuse as this is, Cintiq's a pain to draw in; and being on work hours doing these studies doesn't help much. I will say though, looking through this book's helped alot.

Anyhow, more recent stuff from the sketchbook below: