Babylanche!

Tonight was a fun draw night. I only got through a couple drawings at the coffee shop, but we continued doodling at the sushi place, so I was able to squeeze a couple more fun drawings in. I think the mood of the crew was really good, and it was a fun turnout, including a few "occasionals," like Brent and Virginia Critchfield, and a guy named Jeff that I still don't know that well. Anyway, I did a collab with Tom, but don't have the results of it. Hopefully he'll post it on his doodle blog. The other coffee shop drawing is the babylanche drawing. After doodling the girl, I just felt like drawing her slipping on a landslide of babies, and my wish is my command. It was a fun one, and Dave Chisholm sez he's gonna ink it next week. That would be sweeeeet!

But I really enjoyed the sushi restaurant-doodles, too. The first doodle of the girl had really fun hair, a cool angle, and fun fingers; it was just a flowy drawing. And I tried to keep the flow with the next guy, who had to be a vampire. After doodling him, I imagined him looking best underwater, so I add some bubbles and fishies, and was a slave to my wishes once again; what a taskmaster.

I wanted to get off one last drawing before bailing, so I squeezed this one out before we took off. His legs are almost fawn-legs, but that's cool by me. I wanted to keep drawing, but I decided it was a better idea to get some sleep for an evening with hawtness tomorry.

Cheers!

!tghiN sdrawkcaB

This was a fun draw night. I downed three beers before arriving, and I was completely loopy when I arrived. I started by doodling a really big head thinking it would impress everyone at the table, and Dave offered to ink it! What a bunch of rad; I thought it turned out awesome. He added a bunch of menace and kicked it up a notch. I really like all of the lines he added around the eyes, and I like the way he made the fingers and hand look. I just like inks, and wish I could be better at them without putting in the time. ;-)



I included two versions of the next page, one rotated 180-degrees, to show all of the madness that went on. I started drawing lots of little figures like the last time I was drawing with a buzz, and got through the first two (the spiky, dark-haired yelling guy and the fella to the right of him) when I needed to use the bathroom. While I was out, Ryan drew the guy beneath the spiky, dark-haired yelling guy to see if I would recognize whether I drew it. It threw me for a loop for a second, but I wasn't that out of it, and so I added the lady holding his hand. Later, Ryan drew her head in and made her saying something funny. I think I drew a couple more peeps (the guy to the right of the girl, and the one on the bottom of the page stomping or something) and then handed the page over to Gheybin asking for something superhero-like, and she said all she could do was a guy flexing. She gave me a stick figure, though, and I filled it in. At this point, Hannah showed, but she was just hanging out, so I got her to give me a series of stick figures, all of which she drew upside-down on the page. You can inspect her stuff with the flipped version of the art. Last up was a "man-mer" inspired by the "mer-maid" I made out of one of Hannah's stick figures. Oh, and Ryan showed me how to draw the Kool-Aid guy.

So Dave had a really neat pen that he used to ink my drawing, and I got to fiddle around with it. It clicked better than other brush pens I've used, and it looked really similar to what Paul Pope used to create my Con sketch. I might have to fiddle with it more later, because it was rather fun to use.

Next up was a squiggle Hannah seemed to give me out of nowhere (or I don't remember asking for it.) I inked the line so I could remember it, and you can see that I still have no control over the inks, really. I kept spinning the page trying to see if I could come up with a cleverer use of the line, but I ended up doing something rather similar to my last squiggly awhile back. It was a fun drawing.



We kept drawing at the sushi place, and Gheybin let me use her blue pen. I screwed up the guy's hand, so I decided to make it a "thought" and tried again. While I was doodling, Gheybin showed us her art-book, where she writes backwards when she gets really frustrated. I was completely intrigued by it, and wondered how well I could write backwards. I thought I did well even though I would screw up my "d"s and "b"s a lot. So I added some backwards text, and even signed my name backwards. I included a mirror of the drawing so you could see how I fared.

The last page was a fun disaster. Gheybin asked for a drawing of her, and I was too intimidated to draw anything other than something simple. (She's the one in the thought-bubble.) Then Dave asked me to do him, and I went for a simple version of him, too (with glasses, in center). I feel like I screwed up his lips, though, which is a bummer, since I think they are one of the more interesting things about his look. So he grabbed the page and did one of me (left of him, with bags under eyes). When he handed it back, I decided to give myself a meatier body, and added hair at Ryan's request. Everyone was laughing at the weirdness on the page, and asked me to do Dave's body, so I made him extra skinny (he is wiry), and then put my arm around it. Dave kept saying "beautiful," so I added it as a word bubble. Dave then mentioned having a sheen on my body, so I added the sparkles. And then, to get a laugh out of everyone, despite my arm being around Dave, I decided to have me thinking about Gheybin, and drew the thought-bubble around her. After that, I tried to draw a mean guy for Ryan that had a mouth that reminded everyone of Beaker, which compelled me to draw my best beaker and doctor (name?) from memory. Dave did a Kermit from memory that was impressive, so I added a body, and then tried Cookie Monster (but messed up a bit). The last one I tried was Gonzo, but couldn't figure it out. The higher Gonzo Dave was much better. The end result is a mess, but making it was very fun.

Paul Pope!

I wanted to meet up with Dave at Comic Con and knew he was trying to see Paul Pope, so I headed over, expecting him to be in a long-ass line. I absolutely love Paul Pope, but avoid lines altogether, and when I got over there, Dave was nowhere to be found because he'd come and gone; Pope only had three people in front of him! I completely flipped out. How could so few people be waiting in line to see him?!? The world is weird. So I begged Emi -- who graciously tagged along -- for some paper, and got the world's best con sketch from him. Pope said it was a character he had dreamed up in high school, but I bet he had know idea his character's fork would have things to say about me.

Naked Wolverine!

On a later night at the con, we found ourselves doodling again, and nudity was in effect, perhaps because Cory Walker made a comment to me (that day?) about my lack of shyness around "man-wang," or something to that effect. I had to celebrate. First up was some warm ups, a fella in his birthday suit that had his hands positioned for "numbchuck" action (so I added 'em), and another kinda cool pose that was kicked up a notch with a dash of scrote, thrown in with a BAM!

The next page started innocently. I drew a guy (left) with up-sweeping, left-to-right lines on his face that ended up looking a bit like Wolverine. Someone commented on it, so I drew a "real" Wolverine in the upper-right. And since his costume annoys me and hair doesn't, I decided in the buff was best. But there were no ladies in the mix, so I tried to fix the problem while drawing a woman leaning on one straight leg, since someone in the room mentioned having a hard time drawing that and was curious how we did it.

Hotel California

On 1008-07-25 I was at the Comic-Con, and Ryan Ottley and Derek Hunter were hanging with my friends Joe and Kris in the hotel room. Ottley was doing commissions for his fans and I decided to be festive and doodle a bit, too. For warm up came the grumpy looking fella. I notice I often juxtapose cheerful, expressive women with a mister grumpy-pants. I'm not sure why.

Some of you know that I sometimes get frustrated with how my superheroes turn out, so I decided to press on it and do an Invincible, since Ottley was drawing a lot of them that evening. I just tried to let the lines take things places instead of over-thinking how the costume would fit on a human body, and I thought it turned out a little better than my normal fare. Invincible really looked like he needed to be holding something, so I gave him a mouse. :-)

And last up was a figure-chain, something I just enjoy making every once in awhile. It's fun to decide on a connecting point on a figure and just draw another figure from there, and even more fun to try to get them to match up. Not sure how good of a job I did in my exercise of getting figures positioned in space and drawing them from uncomfortable starting points. The first drawing was the guy on the left, and it went counterclockwise from there.

Posies

Most of the drawings of the evening of 2008-07-15 were pose-trades with the drawing crew. I only remember a few of who attended by the poses here. But first up was just some generic doodling as warm up and I liked how they turned out. The hair and the pose on the upper-left guy were fun, trying a guy in repose while ignoring what he is sitting on is just plain lazy, and I guess hiding a lot of anatomy in perspective is, too. 1/3 non-lazy drawings isn't bad.

Next up was a pose from the wondrous Rachel Hunter. You can kinda see her lines underneath mine and the liberties I took with them. The weird flat BVDs were my remembering what they look like, because Rachel asked about it for a drawing she did.

Third up was a completely strange pose by Ryan Ottley. The figure was so demented looking that I didn't bother trying to fit a normal figure on it. It made the drawing really dynamic and crazy and pretty fun, though. I liked all the interesting shapes on the figure. Thank you, Ryan!

I had to get Dave Chisholm in the act, and he gave me a very long figure that at first, I wasn't 100% sure was a man or a woman. I decided to push it to an alien / monster-looking thing in the end.

Thomas Schole's pose for me was the toughest, though. He said he didn't want me to do anything with it because he thought he screwed up or something, but I started seeing an old guy with a bit of a gut going at it, and it was fun enough that I went for it. The pose thing is fun to do because it can be real random at times.

The last drawing I didn't actually do at drawing night, but I did at my apartment later. I was thinking of the hairstyle of this girl I met at Hannah's birthday party, and wanted to draw it on a face. I ended up rather liking the doodle. There's something pleasant about it for me.

Far Hairz

I missed Derek, Ray, and Ottley this week. It was another very flowy night. Lately it has been fun to try letting go a little to see what comes out of it, and I've been enjoying the results. I started with this stinky critter's slanted eyelids, burgeoning eyes, and spiny skin. I enjoyed making his floppy ears, his spiny protrusions, and the flies surrounding him. I focused a lot on line edges while he was being doodled, and filled in details after the fact.

Pic two was also started with the eyes. I particularly enjoyed giving him his bow-legs, and I liked having a cat, dog, and then mouse all in one pic. Bandit cat and gun dog are cool. And "far hairz" is yokel for "fire hairs." The text was just there to wrap it all together with some loose theme.

I started this just trying to draw a pretty yet somewhat unusual gal, and after she was finished I was jokingly asked if she had a sister, so I added her sister. Super sisterz foreverz.

My last pic at the cafe was a quicky before going out to eat. I liked his expression, and that he thinks his stars are awesome, but they really aren't that great. I showed this drawing to our hostess when we went out eat later, and she was unimpressed by his stars. She wanted to show us how good she was at drawing stars, and the top two are hers.

After we ate I still felt like doodling, so I drew a hairy elf-guy running. He's a stinker. I like hair.

Last up was a lazy one after drinking for a bit. I was a little buzzed, and I just let go. The head is quite assy, but I enjoyed all the figures.

I think I see more humor getting back into my drawings. That makes me happy.