Chicks and geese and ducks better scurry...

Yesterday afternoon brought an adventure to the Michigan State Fair. Azucena and myself had it in mind to sketch us some livestock. Sort of Dr. Sketchy without the costume changes, although the models tend to move around a bit more. But where Dr. Sketchy usually offers the opportunity to have a pint of beer with my drawing, nothing...and I mean nothing...beats the bottomless glass of chocolate milk at the cow pavilion.

Before reaching the fairgrounds we stopped at the art supply store. I wanted to get some kind of water colors to work with. I found a really cool little kit about the size of a deck of cards. It came with a neat little brush that had a water reservoir in it, so I didn't need to carry a little cup of water or anything. It's made by Koi Watercolors. I really like little compact things like that. I'll be using that at the next Dr. Sketchy.

The brush pen I use (thanks to Rob Ullman) is somewhat similar in that it has a reservoir for the ink and doesn't require that you dip it in a bottle every few strokes. Pentel makes it. The ink is almost kind of waterproof. Here are the results:

She moves in mysterious ways.

Yesterday's Dr. Sketchy was hosted by Blick Art Supplies in Dearborn and featured Lana of Detroit Bellydance who posed for us once before. I was running much too late and only had time to feed the dog before running off for a haircut and then on to the session. So I ended up using my tablet pc again.

I love my tablet, but for doing figure drawing it has it's downsides. One is that the screen is small and I have to zoom in to see detail which then means I can't see the rest of my drawing. It also provides me with the dangerous "undo" button if I feel I've made a mistake. Figure drawing isn't about fixing and re-fixing what you're doing, it's about teaching you to do it right in the first place. But I do like having all of those colors and digital media at my fingertips! Plus I don't have to scan anything in afterwards. Maybe I was being too harsh on my tablet. Still, I bought one of those fancy Moleskine (how DO you say that anyway?) sketch books and meant to get one of those little water color sets to try out for next time.

So, here's Lana in various poses and various colors!

Rock-Onward Xian Soldiers

Another fake band flier.

Something...something...Dark Side.

I heard the new animated Star Wars movie was pretty crummy. This is what I have to say to that.

Photo by Scott McKeeve

We're with the band.

This poster is for an upcoming HATCH show of fake concert fliers. Violent Gecko doesn't exist in the real world, but when a woman named Violet Greco introduced herself to me that wasn't what I heard.

Comic Con '08: The Official Record

*http://www.adurosphotography.com/

Sketchy and sketches

I played it lazy last night and used my mighty tablet pc at Dr. Sketchy as opposed to real paper and pencils. Azucena teasingly calls it cheating. I've made it a point up until now to not use the tablet so that I would be forced into fixing on the fly whatever mistakes I make using traditional media. How else do we improve but by learning from our mistakes?

Our models for the night consisted of three hula hoopers, including Revolva (awesome name) who posed for us before. All proceeds went to Blight Busters which gives hula hoops to inner city kids for World Hoop Day. The fun part of drawing hula hoopers in action is that nobody can tell you that you got it wrong. The models were moving far too fast to get an accurate picture of what they were doing. In fact, all of my sketches are amalgams of the three hoopers, using an arm from this one, a leg from that one...etc. The session was more about capturing the feeling of movement than any kind of accuracy and it led to much more cartoony drawings than what I normally produce at Dr. Sketchy.

I'm also throwing in three sketches from lunch break earlier in the day. Kind of my warm-up for D.S.: a girl from a pop-up ad on my email, Ellie, and Azucena admiring a rock.

Coming up next: My Comic Con report! I got to meet Dr. Sketchy creator Molly Crabapple herself! Stay tuned!