Miyazaki inspired

Thankfully, my deadline was pushed back (that almost never happens) so, I have a little extra breathing room. Thus, last night after watching the story reel of NAUSICCA, this ended up in my sketchbook. The values could use some work but, it's kinda fun.

Do yourself a favor and pick up the DVD release of NAUSICCA: VALLEY OF THE WIND. Miyazaki's storyboards are staggeringly beautiful. He has such a loose, confident line and his compositions are fantastic.

Nausicca!? Why does he keep talking about Nausicca? This is obviously inspired by TOTORO! Shut up.

The new brush pen

Whew, just got a massive deadline dumped in my lap so, I might not be around these parts much this week. Until then, here's a little experimenting I was doing with my new Kuretake Brush Fountain pen.

Nothing

Sometimes, I just don't have any ideas...

Unsanctioned

My buddy Robert came up for a visit from Phoenix this weekend and we went on a two day unsanctioned Sketchcrawl 4.5. Sketchcrawl was the brainchild of Enrico Casarosa and I was lucky enough to go on Sketchcrawl 4 last month (see one of my earlier posts for some sketches.) Enrico is a great artist and you should check out his work HERE You can also see his work and many others on the SKETCHCRAWL WEBSITE AND FORUMS

We started in Marin County on Friday at Muir Woods, then we headed to the beach which is the pic you see at the top of this post.


Eventually we made our way back to San Rafael for a tasty dinner at La Toscana and then for some Apple Cider at the Aroma Cafe. By that point we were both kind of tired and some punchy drawings like above happened.


Day 2 started in San Francisco. Robert didn't get to go on Sketchcrawl 4 so, I thought I would take him on a route similar to the one we all took back in late August. That means we started at Delores Park. I don't know why, but I seem to start these days out with some rather detailed work instead of some light easy sketching to warm myself up.

We eventually made our way to the Haight-Ashbury district where I did some rather dreadful drawings. While in the area I was called a pimp, we got to see a guy try to jack a car, we were asked if we wanted any bud, and I was asked by some scary guy in Golden Gate Park whether I wanted to see his hog. Oh the joys of the big city.

By this point the sun had disappeared under some clouds and the wind kicked up. We sheltered ourselves in the Canvas Cafe where Robert got to see the Dan Lee Exhibition before it was taken down that same evening. We drew some caricatures (with mixed results) of some of the patrons of the cafe.


We then ended the day in Sausalito for a last sketch or two. This was probably my best of the day although, I wish I had captured the warm light that was hitting the buildings as the sun began to set. I was tempted to go back in when I got home with a few hits of gouache, but I thought it was best to leave well enough alone. Returning to a painting usually leads to me screwing it up.

Heads

Sometimes, I just draw pages and pages of heads...
Can you spot the influence?

New SKETCHBOOK

Kinda says it all doesn't it.


Hopefully I can get this figured out in time...

GOGGLES!

Girls wearing goggles pop up in my drawings sometimes; this is one of those times.

New Gadgets

They really do...

Since moving to Northern California, I have become kind of fascinated/obsessed with various types of sketchbooks and drawing gadgets. I was in San Fran this weekend, in particular Japantown, and I found all of these crazy japanese pens and brush pens that I have never seen before. This lead to drawings like this brush pen sketch below.

More Girls...

A couple more drawings. I have this sketchbook that I only draw girls in. The idea is that by the end of it, I will see a real progression not only in ability, but style as well. The paper has 12 different colours of paper in it and every day, I get closer to the yellows, oranges and reds... who knows what I'll do when I get to those!? I'm not a big fan of the colour yellow.

This second drawing was a much more successful use of the brush pen.

Running

I was doing some quick sketches of girls running, and I realised that everything I was drawing was a pushed animation or comic version of a run with the character really working it. I decided to do a drawing that was more of an actual pose you would see someone hitting on an evening jog. This was the result. My first attempt at inking with a brush (well brush pen) and it's crummy. I'll post a better one later...

Jump Cannon

Ah, Jump Cannon... a character that has been with me for a while. He was supposed to make his debut in an anthology at SDCC this year, but unfortunately, the book fell apart and was never published. Too bad too, there were some seriously talented people working on that book (not sure why I was there) who did some great stories with some REALLY fantastic artwork. Alas, it was not to be *sigh* Any ways, I do have a 10 page story done with the characters you see above, full colour. It was the first comic work I've done, and I really caught the bug. I'm itching to do another story. I have an idea for a much BIGGER Jump Cannon story as well as an idea for something entirely different. I'm hoping that a version of this 10 page story might end up in something else that I'm working on for next SDCC. We'll see how it goes; one never knows with these things.


This was the first sketch I did where the character started to come together. Little did I know that the monkey drawing would become the inspiration for the villain of the story...


Krueger, the villain that will probably appear in more than just this one story... of course, he may be in a different form for the next story.


Even in the script I wrote, these guys were wearing Devo hats. I'm not sure why.


The first full figure I did of Jump. I have this bad habit of only drawing heads when I'm first designing a character.

In a future post maybe I'll post some thumbnails from the story...