Wednesday Madness!!!

Haha! Who'd'a thought, I'd be posting just one week later, heh?

Had a very interesting kumzitz the other day, and it appears that I've actually set up with Pazi for Monday evening to start work on, yep, -- the return of A Comic. We decided we'd be doing K-640 -- for those of you who've forgotten, it's the one that actually got published in print just before Senior Yours Truly had to get reinstated -- but I still hold Ping 972 near and dear to my heart I cut my teeth on that comic, and made some pretty bad-ass art for it! Which, sadly, I can't actually put up 'cos it's on a CD somewhere in the freakin' cupboard. I'll have to get around to fishing it out and putting some of my old stuff on here. This weekend. I don't have a fancy network with a fileserver storing all my stuff for me throughout the ages.

As for my drawing classes, those are progressing quite interesting, and I'm putting up some stuff I did today not for you guys, but for me to look at a while away and say hey wow, did I do that then? huh.

I started out with this face just to warm up. I know it looks crooked, 'cos as usual I don't ahve a scanner, but I think it came out pretty straight. The thing that I find amazing is that I just couldn't get the faces right in the past. The proportions, the locations, the shapes of things and their shading, just never saw it before. So ok, it's still a long way away, and I need some practice, but I was actually ready to forgo class this evening. Glad I didn't do that.

But I was still unsatisfied with the whole shading deal. I've always read in the books that you have to start doing those spheres and blocks, and you know what? I always made a half-hearted attempt that very rarely amounted to anything, and I would dismiss the exercise on the "yeah, yeah, I get it" argument.

But I went ahead and did the exercise anyway. And it was pretty tough. It's getting the shading done right that's hard. Started out with a few simple maneuvers just to get warmed up. That was simple enough, but as you can see it was far from convincing.
A little bit more work, using a nice, soft 6B pencil, and it looks like I might be headed in the right direction. the shape is starting to blend in smoothly with the background, and the shading is starting to look more gradual and yet smoother.





I did one more trial run, and tried to focus on using the pencil differently to do the shading. I had started out with a sharp tip, holding the pencil horizontal against the paper and running it from side to side. But once it was worn down, I did the second sketch using the tip with the pencil straight up, filling surfaces with parallel lines and then blurring them with my thumb and fingers till I got a near-even surface. It looked very different, and I was content with trying out different techniques, which ultimately led me to my last iteration of that god damned sphere. It's pretty tough, doing these shadings. And then I have to apply this to real shapes? Holy-mother-of-crap-with-Jesus-in-a-box!
I call it "The All-Seeing Bleaaah". I don't quite know why, but who cares? My next comic is going to be so fucking cool. For me, anyway.