AlphaBands Wrap-up: 26 Weeks of Music and Musician Drawings

So, here’re all my drawings from the recently-completed AlphaBands project. As is usual with these sorts of weekly drawing exercises, the end results are a mixed bag. Looking back on these, there are some I really like (Karl Bartos, CCR, Hank Shocklee, Woody Guthrie) and some that were obvious duds (Angus Young, Iggy Pop, Marvin Gaye)–with the rest falling somewhere in between the two extremes.

Also as usual, though, I used this exercise not just as an excuse to draw regularly, but also to learn some new tools. All of these were drawn and colored in Digital Manga Studio on my Surface Pro 2. I also started investigating some of Ray Frenden’s custom Manga Studio brushes. The CCR illustration, for example, was colored with his watercolor wash brushes and you can see some of his dry media brushes creating charcoal-like effects in some of the later drawings. If you want to try some of these brushes out for yourself, you can buy them from his shop here. They’re well worth picking up.

Thanks to all the folks that participated in AlphaBands–whether with a single drawing or a full set of 26–and a big thanks to Sam Wolk who was the tumblr admin this time around. I know that’s a ton of work!

(You can right/ctrl click any image and open the link in a new tab to get a bigger version.)