'Your Excuses Suck' | Daily Drawing #59.
Missed posting yesterday's drawing. On the East Coast we were hit with (yet another) Winter storm and this fucker dumped a lot of snow accompanied by some bitter cold. It took a while to dig out, and unfortunately I had to deal with a roof leak. My favorite way to spend a Friday night!
But hey, that sounds like an excuse. And excuses suck.
Tools: Flair pens and Sharpee markers. Colorized in Photoshop.
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” ― Benjamin Franklin
I've been doing a lot more of these pen and ink drawings lately.
I was raised on R. Crumb, Rick Griffin and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and emulated their styles growing up. It stuck with me.
Generally, I just start doodling a face or a feature and a random drawing appears.
Tonight, we expose the dark secret of 'Mr. Wilkerson'.
Tools: Staedtler Pigment Liners
(I got up extra early this morning to knock this one out...)
Saying 'NO' to something could potentially free you up for something bigger or more rewarding. Don't be afraid to say no.
' It's All Good' - a quickie Moleskine drawing with a Micron 03.
Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
A 5-minute quickie. Sakura Pigma Sensei (0.6mm) on Bristol board. Scanned and colored in Photoshop.
“The things you own end up owning you.” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
The full quote from the book Fight Club (by Chuck Palahniuk) goes like this: “The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.”
I occasionally experience manic states where I suddenly feel the need to shed all the crap that's accumulated around me. This week, I'm in one of those states, so if you're close by, you might find something useful out on the curb.
Drawing: Micron pens on Moleskine notepad.
Some of us are just afraid of success. Hand-lettered then scanned/traced in Illustrator. Final image composed in Photoshop. Prints and more available at Society6!
Daily drawing. Micron pens on Moleskine Notebook .
This quote keeps me mindful of how quickly time passes. This quote has been attributed to author and blogger Gretchen Rubin, author of 'The Happiness Project' and 'Happier at Home'. Hand-lettered and scanned, minimal cleanup then colorized in Photoshop.
Hand-lettered, scanned/cleaned up in Photoshop. Traced/refined in Illustrator.
Prints, tee shirts and more available at Society6. Support starving artists!
Production photos: Loose drawing:
Inking in progress:
Scan. I originally thought of keeping the rough look, but eventually went for the clean, smoother lines.
I was going through some old sketch books and discovered this. At the time, my son and I thought it would be absolutely hilarious if our dog had wheels instead of legs. I guess you had to be there. I showed it to him today, we still had a laugh.
I watched the movie 'Soylent Green' last Sunday night on Amazon. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest movie ever. This movie ranked up there with 'Westworld', 'Logan's Run', 'Omega Man', 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Silent Running' as my favorites of the pre-Star Wars era.
I especially loved the detailed illustration on the movie posters - riot police with trucks scooping up people and putting them in the back of trucks to be carted off to who knows where.
Soylent Green was filmed in 1973 and set in the year 2022. There are 40 million people in New York. The greenhouse effect' makes it hot all year round and the only food is rations of processed colored soy crackers. A new flavor 'Soylent Green' is introduced, made of a new 'high energy plankton' - but it's in short supply and riots are frequent. While investigating a series of mysterious murders, the main character 'Thorn' (Charlton Heston) stumbles upon the Soylent Green's main ingredient.
(Spoiler Alert: "It's People!")
Tools: Sharpie and Micron pens. Scanned and colored in Photoshop.
This is for all the lonely hearts out there on Valentine's Day: Give up, you'll be forever alone.
I actually did this one a while back while experimenting with the Procreate app on the iPad. I also had just picked up the More/Real stylus cap. I like this stylus cap because it slides over the end of a regular sharpie, giving it a more natural 'pen' feel and weight. It's also got a firm tip, which is more natural than drawing with a mushy tipped stylus.
Tools:Procreate App on the iPad 2 using a More/Real stylus cap.
“Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants” - from Michael Pollan's Seven Words and Seven Rules for Eating.
The posting of this drawing is not a coincidence, as I've decided to spend this month re-examining how I eat. And what better month than the awful, cold and gloomy February to do it. I eat pretty well (for the most part) and exercise but the holidays are a great excuse to slack off. I don't want to turn around in May and see that my shorts are a lil' snug. It's not a nice look.
Eating properly isn't that hard, it just takes a little more planning and a lot of discipline. I'm keeping a food diary to keep tabs on what I eat for the next month, cutting back on beer (sad face) and cutting out the junk. Wish me luck!
The seven rules according to Pollan are as follows:
Illustration details: Hand-lettered, scanned and recolored in Photoshop. Watercolor paper background. There was minimal cleanup in Photoshop to keep the loose, hand lettered feel.
I'd heard this phrase a while back and jotted it down in my sketchbook. I then discovered it's also the title of a popular self-help book.
It's a handy phrase for when you're too scared or think you don't have the balls to do something. It's also another way to tell yourself to get off your ass and just do it.
Unless your decision involves death (yours or someone else's), dismemberment or whether or not you should get that cool neck tattoo – just go for it.
Tools: Headline Type: Pilot Super Color Jumbo Marker (which was a gift from the super-talented Philly artist, Sean Martorana, who inspired me to get off my ass and start doing more art-related projects). Subhead type: Sharpie on Bristol Board with Sakura Pigma Sensei 0.4mm touch-up Background: Stock photo
A quick time lapse of some lettering to welcome the New Year. Let's hope this year starts out better than this one ended. We've both been down with the flu (more or less) since the middle of the month. We survived the holiday, but this evil germ has out stayed its welcome.
The quality isn't the best. I'm still working out a better setup for taping, plus the usual battle with iMovie for editing eats up a lot of time.
Today's drawing is some hand-lettering featuring a caricature of Walter White from Breaking Bad.
2 weeks ago I was hit with the flu, which had me pretty much out of commission. So, while I was flat on my back, I spent some time with Walter White and Jessie Pinkman with a Breaking Bad episode marathon on Netflix.
When this show premiered in 2008, I didn't take to it right away. The main reason was that I started watching at Season 1 / Episode 4. If fans recall, Episode 4 ("Cancer Man") was where Walter reveals that he has cancer. At that time in my life, I was also going my own'cancer episode', so I wasn't real keen on watching a show about it, as my own reality was hard enough to take.
Looking back, I really wish I'd watched the first three episodes, because it's definitley up there with some of my favorite television right now (along with 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men').
An illustration created with the 'Paper' app on iPad. I used the Fountain Pen brush for the main strokes, then used the Magic marker and Pencil brushes for some detail work. I used a More/Real Sharpie stylus cap, which gives a more natural drawing feel.
The Five Basic Tools of 'Paper'
I fell in love with the 'Paper' app when it was first released. It's a very stripped down, simple app. You have a simple set of 5 tools and a basic, muted color palette. That's it. The tools are in a handy 'drawer' that slides down, out of your way, to let you get down to business. You can organize your drawing in 'notebooks' that mimic Moleskine journals. You can add/delete pages and move them from one journal to the other. The best part (for me) is the ability to share drawings via email, Tumblr or Twitter, or just save to Camera Roll.
'Paper' is great for loose illustrations and diagrams. It has no layers, filters, import or color correction and you can't change the color palette. But that's kind of the point - keep the tools out of the way and get your ideas on paper. If you're looking for something more robust for the iPad, I'd suggest Procreate.
