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!

Blimp!

Just a little sketch to tide you over until I post some Comic Con photos!

Doggonit!

Here's another illustration for the presentation I did a few weeks back. The big dog (played by Bijou, my notoriously e-VIL Border Collie mix) represents the gigantic communications company that is bigger than everybody else and is loved by all, whereas the small dogs represent the competition that does nothing for you except maybe pee on your rug.

Get Booked!

I'm heading to San Diego in a few weeks for Comic-Con International, for what has to be the biggest geekfest in the world. I want to take a portable portfolio with me to show, just in case, ya know, but don't want to carry a laptop or my tablet which could get lost, broken, or stolen. So I went through Blurb.com and had this book made.


It's 82 pages, hardcover, with a dust jacket. Fifty bucks delivered! And I have to say, it turned out better than I could imagine. The colors are bright and true to the look of the files on my monitor. Even art that I thought was rather low in resolution looks sharp. If you ever had the idea to put together a book of art or photos this is the stuff. You can order various sizes in paperback or hardcover and even put them up for sale in the Blurb store. Other websites offer the same sort of service including Apple with their iBooks.


I'm also going to get some postcards made too. I just finished the illustration tonight, featuring Ellie meeting denizens of another world.

More from ye olde booke of Sketchy

A few weeks back Cafe 1923 in Hamtramck held the opening for the first Dr. Sketchy art show. And of course we had a session of drawing as well. Everyone's favorite model, Muana, posed for us in all her Geisha finery. We even got to go draw outside - a Dr. Sketchy first. The show will be hanging until July 12.

A few of my sketches hang along with Azucena's and others'.