Jan
27

A Year of Weekly Portraits

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Roughly one year ago, I decided that the only way to get better at drawing faces was…. to draw faces–and to draw them regularly. So, beginning on January 25th of last year, I drew a portrait every week and posted each to Twitter (with the #PortraitNight hashtag) on Tuesday nights. My goal was to do this for an entire year, which as of this week I’ve accomplished. (I’ve actually done a year and a week, since I got a request for portrait #52, but wanted to wrap up with a self-portrait.)

Looking at the portraits all together now, I’d say the project had mixed results. A few of these turned out really well, a few are downright terrible, and most are just sort of OK. I’m not sure how much I really improved my ability to accurately see and draw facial likenesses, but for sure any regular drawing routine has its benefits. If I could do this project again, though, I’d make two changes:

(1) I’d branch out more as far as style and technique goes. There are a few of these where I’m trying something out of my comfort zone, but for the most part I tended to stick to my “stock” drawing tools–Pentel brush pen with digital color. I also wish that I’d pushed myself a bit more to do some of these with a far more abstracted and simplified style. I started moving that direction just slightly with the Tilda Swinton drawing, where I forced myself to do so by doing multiple iterations of the drawing, trying to simplify each time. Most of these, though, fall safely at about the ¾ mark on the old Scott McCloud “realistic-to-cartoony” scale.

(2) I wouldn’t have done so many indie/rock musicians. One of my big projects in 2011 was digitizing all of my old CDs and as a result, I think I was really in “music mode” for a lot of the year. I also read Our Band Could Be Your Life 2011 and decided to draw a musician from each chapter of that. A result of doing all these musician drawings is a preponderance of 25-40 year old white guys as subjects. Drawing on a broader group of subjects would definitely have made this a more valuable exercise.

Anyway, it was a rewarding project and I hope I’ve gotten at least a tiny bit better at drawing likenesses. Here’s a gallery of them all in chronological order. Clicking on the image will take you to the full Picasa gallery:

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Jan
25

My Top Three Most Overlooked Books Of 2011

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I neglected to do a top ten list for 2011. Partially I was just busy–but also, looking at the lists that other people together, I realized that there are a lot of major books that dropped in 2011 that I’ve not read yet. I have, though, noticed a conspicuous absence in most of these Best Of 2011 lists of three of last year’s books that I certainly would have put on my list if I’d made one.

I’ll preface this by noting that these books my have not made the big Best Of lists for reasons entirely unrelated to their quality: none is an original work of fiction first published in 2011. One is a previously-published foreign book, translated and published domestically in 2011; one is a collection of short stories that were published as minicomics and collected only this past year; and one is a cartoonist’s excerpted sketchbooks, available only via his website or at convention appearances. Regardless, here are three of my favorite books from 2011 that I’ve seen criminally little acknowledgement of:

1) Pinocchio by Winshluss – If you need any convincing of how ignored this book has been, do a Google search for it. The fourth result you’ll get will likely be my review on this very blog. You can read that blog entry to get an idea of what an amazing book this is. It’s been out in France for a while and was an Angoulême winner, but was only translated into English and made available in 2011 by Last Gasp. If I had to guess, I’d say there’re two main reasons this book got swept under the rug: (1) people probably thought is was some kids-oriented comics version of the traditional Pinocchio story–it ain’t by a long shot, believe me!–and (2) it had the misfortune to come out the same day as Chester Brown’s Paying For It.

2) I Will Bite You by Joe Lambert – If you’re into the minicomics scene (whatever the heck that is, exactly) and hit conventions like SPX regularly you probably know Joe Lambert’s work. He’s a prolific producer of gorgeously-drawn, formally-ambitious minicomics whose work I first became aware of via some of my visits to The Center for Cartoon Studies. I’ve grabbed his work whenever I’ve had the opportunity to, but he’s hard to keep up with. Thankfully, Secret Acres collected a lot of his minicomics work in I Will Bite You in 2011. As you can imagine with a collection of a ton of individual minis, there’s a bit of thematic overlap here–and it’s for sure a collection more than a book–but this volume is a pretty great introduction to the work of a flat-out amazing cartoonist who you’re guaranteed to hear more of in the future.

3) Sketchbooks by Chris Schweizer – A lot of cartoonists do self-published booklets of their sketchbook drawings to sell at comics conventions, but few–if any–have produced a publication that’s as professional and as insightful process-wise as this sketchbook collection is. Chris’s Sketchbooks contains tons and tons of developmental drawings from his Crogan’s Adventure series as well as other drawings, but  what really puts this book over the top for me is all the great writing by Chris, describing his thought processes and drawing routines. You can buy it here.

 

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Jan
24

Portrait Night 1/24 (Ben Towle)

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Well, that’s all folks. It was one year ago that I set out to draw a portrait every Tuesday night for a full year. I thought it would be appropriate for my final entry to attempt a self-portrait, something I don’t think I’ve done since I was a college sophomore in the late 80s. I really don’t recommend it–I really don’t need to be this intimately reminded of all my weird moles, gradually receding hairline, etc.

Later this week, I’ll work up a more extensive “project summary” blog post with some post-completion reflections/observations and full a gallery of all the portraits, but here’s the final #PortraitNight subject: me.

I look super-cranky here, but I’m a nice guy, I promise! I was just irritated because I was having a hard time successfully taking a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror. How do those “duckface” women do it so successfully?

Here’s me in real life. Sorry about the scan-of-a-printout-of-pictures. I printed my photo reference and then deleted the pics from my camera.

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Jan
23

O is for Osquip

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There were a number of interesting “O” Dungeons & Dragons creature choices for this week’s AlphaBeasts, but once I crossed the osquip in the Fiend Folio my mind was made up. Partially I think it’s because he’s clearly the ancestor of the watery-beer-shilling “Spuds MacKenzie,” commercial icon of the 80s. The osquip is the original original party animal.Also, though, he looks a lot like the signature dogs drawn by one of my favorite New Yorker cartoonists,  George Booth:Anyhoo, here he is:

O is for Osquip

The original art for this is for sale here.

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Jan
17

Portrait Night 1/17 (James Honeyman-Scott)

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Tonight’s #PortraitNight subject is by request. I received a comment to my earlier drawing of Chrissy Hynde requesting a drawing of the amazing Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. Reference-wise, I wound up sort of combining the photo below with another one (that I for some reason can’t re-locate online) of him with a collared shirt and blond hair. Anyway, here’s James Honeyman-Scott:

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Jan
16

N is for Neo-Otyugh

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I started off not really liking this creature design, but looking at it now, I think this is one of the best AlpahBeast drawings I’ve done.

N is for Neo-Otyugh

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

You can follow the other “N” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

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Jan
10

Portrait Night 1/10 (Pete Townshend)

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Well, this was kind of an accidental #PortraitNight. I’d selected a picture of Newt Gingrich from the most recent TIME Magazine to draw, but before settling down to drawing I decided to put on a record. Near the top of the stack was Pete Townshend ‘s Empty Glass–and after putting it on I wound up doodling a pic of Townshend instead of Newt. This drawing really is more a doodle than a finished drawing, but I feel like I’ve been laboring these portrait drawings more than I should. Anyhoo… here it is:

And here’s the back cover of the LP I was drawing from:

If you’d like to suggest a #PortraitNight subject, you can do so either via the comments section here, or via my Twitter.

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Jan
09

M is for Morkoth

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None of the “M” D&D creatures I saw really jumped out at me this week, so I decided I’d select the most abjectly ridiculous creature I could find instead. While I settled on the Morkoth from the original Monster Manual, the Mongrelman from the Fiend Folio was a close runner-up. Mongrelman is one of those dopey “mash up” creatures that has one limb from a different creature:

Throughout the AlphaBeasts project, I vowed not to redesign any of the creatures, but if I’d allowed my self to modify the Mongrelman and give him a celery stalk arm and Patrick Duffy for a leg, like Scuzzlebutt, I’d have drawn the Mongrelman instead. Anyway, I settled on the Morkoth. I’m clearly not the only person to find this creature design pretty silly.

M is for Morkoth

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

For reference, here’s the original Morkoth from the Monster Manual:

You can follow the other “M” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

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Jan
04

Portrait Night 1/4 (Chris and Rich Robinson)

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Update: I’m still not really happy with this one, but given that my next portrait is due tomorrow, I went ahead and wrapped this one up. So, here you go: Chris and Rich Robinson, (Original post below.)

So, once again “real life” is interfering with my #PortraitNight project/ritual, but since I’m an hour late at this point, I’ll just post what I’ve got. I started a drawing of Chris and Rich Robinson (of the Black Crowes) but haven’t had time to really finish it. The Black Crowes are a band that–in my opinion–gets unfairly disparaged as being “derivative.” Are they derivative? Well, maybe so.. but in 1990 when Shake Your Money Maker came out, I was more than enthused to hear something on the air like “Hard To Handle,” their Faces-esque cover of that Marvin Gaye tune.  If my alternative are the non-”derivative” tunes of 1990, I’ll sure as heck take the Crowes:

http://top40-charts.com/features/YearEnd/yearend1990.php

Their records became more and more interesting as they progressed, culminating with their 1994 record Amorica, which is solidly one of my top ten albums of the 90s.

PortraitNight, however, I’m not that pleased with. I like my drawing of Chris, but not at all of Rich. I may revisit this for next #PortraitNight (is that “legal”?) but for now, here’s what I’ve got in my sketchbook:

…and here’s the photo I was looking at:

More soon!

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Jan
02

L is for Lizard Man

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This week’s “L” choice was an easy one to make. As a kid I drew tons of D&D stuff, but for some reason this little guy was my favorite. As he appears in the 1979 edition of the game, though, he’s a bit of an odd bird. Lizard men appear in two locations of the book, neither of which are consistent with one another (not to mention the Lizard Man entry in the Monster Manual, which is also different). In the  “Monsters” section of the book, they’re described as “aquatic monsters” who are “at least semi-intelligent and use weapons such as spears and clubs,” but on the very first page of the book we get this drawing of a lizard man–the one I was most fixated on:

This guy’s clearly more than “semi-intelligent,” is sporting full armor, and appears to be hanging on dry land. I love how he’s not only a lizard himself, but he’s also got a lizard on his helmet and he’s riding a lizard.

Anyhoo… here’s my “L” entry for this week:

L is for Lizard Man

The original art for this is for sale here.

 

Embarrassing bonus: Some of my childhood drawings of the Lizard Man. The sketchbook these are from isn’t dated, but I’d guess I was maybe ten years old when I did these. Note the “mixed nerd signals” here with the D&D lizard man under the Star Wars Tattoine double-sun.

You can follow the other “L” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AlphaBeasts hashtag. View all previous AlphaBeasts entries at the AlphaBeasts Tumblr: http://alphabeasts.tumblr.com/. You can also find some submission guidelines there, as well as links to bestiaries and lists of creatures.

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