Sketchblog and ASIFA Drawings Return

I admit it; I've put so much time and energy into Benthic over the last few months I have seriously neglected the sketchblog. At times I've seriously neglected the sketching itself, admittedly, since I'm drawing all the time anyway. But thats all over now! I won't bother catching up the end of 2010 since I want to be showing current work, so here is the first session I've attended of the 2011 Winter Sessions.

I know most of you are probably thinking, "Oh great, more naked people." But these naked people kind of have hands now. And those bottom two pictures? Those are my two minute poses. The ones that I used to complain about being unscannable squiggles I literally could not show? Bwahahaha!

ASIFA - Fall 2010, Part 2

More work from this current session. I'm fairly happy with several of these. This season has been good to me when I've been there, but I've missed a few more sessions than I like to. I may have to make up for it with some life drawing from elsewhere.

I'm Star of the Week?

I was featured as the Star of the Week on the NYCSSC blog Action Weekly today, which is the league in which I play Inner Tube Water Polo. Considering how impressive I know some of the people in the league are in their daily lives, I was very flattered. I offered to do a quick illustration for the article, and figured I would cross post here as well as putting up some of the process images. Final, watercolor under-painting, and quick thumbnails.

I actually have really mixed feelings about this piece - Inner Tube Water Polo is supposed to be a light hearted, social first and competitive second kind of league and I wanted to make sure the illustration reflected that. I know that's the direction NYCSSC wants the league to move, and the friendly games are more fun. Unfortunately the fact is, as often as not it's a physical and intense game where cheap shots are easy to get away with and tempers can run high. As a player, I'd like to eventually do another piece for myself that I think reflects actually being in the pool.

Comps That Didn't Suck

Whenever I get ready to paint or ink, I'll usually do a small quick thing in my sketchbook first to get my arm and brushes moving around before anything serious can go wrong. Often they turn out terrible and devolve into me making a bunch of lines and shapes, sometimes I get a small image out of them too. Or in the case of the egg, not so small.

ASIFA - Fall 2010, Part 1

This season I finally started getting some of my 1-2 minute gesture drawings to actually scan! Here are a couple, along with one of the standard renderings from the 3-5 minute poses I usually post. I've missed a few sessions this fall but I still have a decent amount of stuff to post.

This most recent sketchbook of mine is slightly water damaged from being in my bag with my trunks and towels during this past season of Inner Tube Water Polo. The good news is that our team won the league championship, the bad news is that scanning out of it is that much harder. I'm suffering through it here for the next couple weeks and then I should be ready to move onto the new sketchbook.

Set Design - Methuselah Hub (Cross Post)

About a month or so ago, I began working on Benthic full time. I've started a blog for everything specific to the process, which I very much hope you'll follow at Benthic - Below the Surface. I'll continue posting my life drawing and work from my other illustration projects here, but (for the time being at least) some of my work that is both sketchbook and Benthic related, I'll simply cross post.

In any case, one of the inbetween stages of the graphic novel process that doesn't fit neatly into any categorized step is designing each of the settings. Not only important to catch the mood of both the scene and the setting itself, but also important to know exactly where everyone is standing, where they are moving to and from, and what parts of the room we need and maybe don't need to see. I usually do this after I thumbnail, and as I pencil. I try to work out the settings a scene or two ahead of where I am; far enough ahead not to slow me down when I get to pencil I page in a place I haven't designed, but close enough that the place is still fresh in my mind for drawing the entire scene.

Attached is one of the concept pages for the hub on the Methuselah, which is basically the equivalent to a bridge or CIC. I made a couple changes on the fly while drawing this current issue but all the major ideas are there from both a mood perspective and from an overhead layout of where everything is.

Random Offerings

Some random things I had laying around the last sketchbook that were worth posting, plus an old pencil sketch of Nephenee that I scanned ages ago and forgot to post.