Illustration Friday: Sky

The Illustration Friday topic is "Sky".  Oh well.  This was an attempt.  I changed the obnoxious black splatters to white.  They were too heavy.  It's still awkward.  I might try another one.

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.

Rasta Flute Guy

Another picture. What to say? I have a lot of new portrait ideas brewing--got some great reference photos this past weekend, and can't wait to get started on them.

This one I did during an 8 hour car trip (it didn't take 8 hours). I had already sketched the guy, and put on the splatters a week (or more ago), but hadn't had time to do the actual drawing until then. The highway was bumpy, so none of my lines are straight, but that was just something I had to work with.

Old African Horn Guy

Here's the third one, though now that I've scanned it I see some things I need to "fix" so I guess it's not quite done....

Wavy African Flute Guy

Here's actually the first of the four I started the other day. This is the one without the mask and spatters (obviously).

Cow Horn Man

When he plays his horn, the children swarm. The five notes of the horn drift across the land and stir everyone's souls. Flies buzz, the adult settle back into their tasks, and everyone feels more connected to each other and the world than they had been before.

I finally started some new pictures, four in all. Is this mass production? I sat around for awhile two nights ago and made sketches, and then put the mask on. The next morning (yesterday), they were all dry, so I did the splatters with the toothbrush, and then yesterday evening that was all dry, so I rubbed the mask off of all three of them (one of them I didn't mask and splatter), and used the technical pens. I must say I'm a bit pleased.

Music Sketches

I didn't ever have time to do the Illustration Friday topic of "confined" though I had lots of ideas, but I did have a chance to do some sketches. The nice thing about sketching people playing music, is, though they're moving, they stay in basically the same position, or at least keep coming back to it.

Music III

******* Here's another picture on one of the "blurred" pieces of paper. Yesterday I made a whole bunch more of these speckled on wet papers, and got some great effects which made me think of ways I could use those effects deliberately.

The problem with using sketches from my sketchbook as reference material is that they're a little vague on what exactly is going on with fingers (the sketchiness of them was just fine on the quick sketch, but nowhere near enough information for this) and what the lights and darks are (which I wasn't dealing with in the sketch, but on this I wanted to know).

But I'm happy to be making pictures, even ones that don't quite work.

Illustration Friday: Blur

I'm thinking about the blurring between reality and fantasy, or between this world and other worlds that we can't normally see. Between sleep and waking, between dream and the everyday. This topic makes me think of Charles De Lint's novels, where the OtherWorld is very close in many places to this one.

I'm not sure this picture at all captures that feeling, but it seems like it's been so long since I made a picture that was any more involved than the sketch I made last week (which I really really liked) that this felt really good.

Illustration Friday: Hollow

I wish I had the lyrics to a song that some friends of mine sing (their band is called Lila). It's all about being hollow, and how necessary that it--for a cup to hold wine, for a flute to play music, and for a soul to soar. It's a lovely song, and this picture doesn't do it justice. But I'm happy to report that all my reference materical came from my own sketchbook (not that you could tell or anything)--from a sketch of a friend playing a wooden flute at an Irish jam, and another friend giving a flute recital, mostly for how the hands go and how they hold the thing. My initial sketch had the flute going the other way, and I had no idea how their hands went. This is quick, on a crappy piece of paper that I managed to pull out of a pad which had ink spilled and then dried on it. Oh well.