Heights #2

Okay, so here is the second picture, heights from the other direction. My son does not like this one AT ALL, but I do. It was too long for the scanner, so this is pieced together.

Illustration Friday: Heights

This is the first of three pictures for "heights".  People look different when viewed from a height.  I had my son pose for reference photos.  He was quite willing.  Besides the bold light, I really liked the different perspectives (which you'll see more of as I finish the other two), and his hands.  He has very expressive hands.

I was also playing with using more washes (to thus save my wrist from a bit of the over-use issue) and doing the hatching a different way that wouldn't hurt.

Puzzle Solved

I've been having a wrist/hand problem.  There's a lump on the top of my right wrist, and it's been hurting to bend my hand down.  And last night while I was sketching, I figured out why--It's from the hatching I do with my technical pens.  It's a repetitive motion kind of thing, and we're talking thousands of little strokes.  I've been doing it like crazy on all my drawings, and it's caught up with me, I guess.  I experimented some with different hand positions, which I do use, but the painful one is one of my main ones.  I've decided that I need to give it a rest (I've noticed this going on for over a month now), and use a different medium that's kinder on my joints for awhile.

So here is my last technical pen drawing for awhile.  We'll see what the days ahead bring.

And I had just embarked on a get-over-not-being-able-to-put-people-in-any-kind-of-setting hangup, and start drawing PLACES as well as people.  This isn't much of a place, but at least there some of it.....

Illustration Friday: Vocal

So HERE is "vocal"--singing or shouting--these make me glad, and a very pleasant way to spend the evening indeed.

Most horrid picture ever

This is the second swamp picture, and I can't even begin to say in how many ways this is a horrible picture (if you want to see a better swamp picture, look at the previous one). Today I was thinking....so how can I make a HAPPY swamp picture? A BEAUTIFUL swamp picture? A LIFE AFFIRMING swamp picture?

That will be next.

This guy is hollering. I wouldn't call it vocal. I'd call it pre-vocal. I'm going to borrow Lisa Graham's story from the last one:

"he's a ticked off dad...in the swamp...screaming at his kids who are flinging mud all over him. He was just trying to tie his shoes...at the picnic...then he sunk into the mud...and the kids thought it was funny...so there they went...taking advantage of poor old dad."

Plus, he's being attacked by mosquitos. Nobody likes that, right?

Of course, nobody likes to be drawn badly, either. This reminds me of the long-ago days when I used to model for the art department. I LOVED modeling. I could get into all sorts of weird, twisted poses (for the short ones), ones that I would have loved to have drawn myself. But I would get MAD when people made bad drawings of me. I was giving them a GIFT of a good pose, and they were wasting it. Well....I've wasted this guy's image. I'll have to do another one. Sorry, guy.

Up from the Swamp

I had no intentions of making a zombie picture. I HATE zombie movies, and now the new proliferation of zombie books. Why would I want to watch something like that, or read something like that, or now, make a picture about something like that?

But alas, the topic was "swamp", and being the people-drawing person that I am, that means a person in a swamp, and really, that sortof ends up looking kindof zombie-ish, or at least a little demented. It was fun, though..... (and I'm not going to make a label for zombies).

Illustration Friday: Swamp

I KNOW that I am a whole week behind on these topics. Not only that, but this is one that I started for the week even before swamp. But I've been thinking about them....and planning them....and even finding the perfect reference material. But not getting them done. So I am still going to do "swamp" proper, and "return" as well, but in the meantime, here's a different swamp. It's about music again (surprise, surprise), and what wild, wonderful things might come out of life in the swamp. This man IS channeling the spirits of the swamp, and it's an eerie, other-earthly kind of sound, but one that grows on you. The more time you spend there, the more it seeps into your bones and becomes a part of you. You can't help it. This happens wherever you might be...the rhythms and melodies of the landscape start to fill you.