Building Your Own City

For Thanksgiving, I traveled to the twin cities to visit my sister.  During the weekend I spent there, my sister took me to St. Anthony Park where it had a great view of the city.  I took my photographs of the cityscape as we explored the park.  I planned to use these photos as reference material for the city I'm constructing for the graphic novel later.

Developing this city where my story takes place has been a challenge because I haven't been able to put much time into that aspect of the graphic novel yet.  It is also challenging because I'm completely inventing it.  It was recommended to me during my BFA critique that I draw from what I know.  In addition to these photos, I also explored Broadway in Fargo and took pictures of the older structures there.  The city plays a big role in the story.  However, this semester I have been focusing mainly on drawing and developing my characters.  I have learned that a lot of work goes into rendering and creating characters for a story.  It has been taking me longer than expected to reach where I am with them currently.  The characters need to fit the mood of the story and the settings they are in.  The next stage of developing my graphic novel will involve more cityscape studies and more in-depth ideas for how I want it to look.  When I returned from my trip I did some quick pen studies of the city using these photographs.

 

 

 

 

I have a rough idea of how I want this city to look but nothing too specific yet.  In the story, the city is undergoing major changes and most of it is being rebuilt.  There is the new part of the city where most of the beginning characters are from and the old abandoned parts (but you later discover people still live there).  I'm going to be working with the old verses the new in my storyline.

Playing With Markers

This semester I've been experimenting with Faber-Castell's big brush markers in my figure drawings rather than ink washes (which I used to create value in most of my previous work).  These markers come in a variety of color sets such as:  cold greys, warm greys, skin tones, classic, basic, and pastels.  I have been using the large brush markers rather than the small ones for my bigger studies since the small ones wear out so fast.  I started using them mostly in my drawing co op studies to illustrate contrast and light more on the figure and to have looser line mark making with ink.  The ink mimics that of an ink wash, but is more controllable.  I can also build up contrast with crosshatching.

I plan to purchase the warm grey set next and experiment with those.  I also need to order replacement markers for my current cold grey set.  After about six or seven large figure studies (and a few small storyboard layouts) the markers begin to wear out.  My lightest grey value is no longer usable.

In many of my character sketches I hadn't reached the point of using contrast with the figure.  Drawing co op has been helping me both understand the lights and shadows on the figure and studying the human anatomy more in-depth.  The markers initially offered me a quick way of illustrating value studies with my characters, settings, and storyboards.  Now I aim to utilize this medium more in finished works in the future since I am beginning to feel comfortable with handling them and how my mark making determines the form of the figure.  I have been trying to incorporate more variety with how I render the shadows on the figure.      

Eventually, I plan to experiment with both ink washes and markers.  I like the spontaneity of ink washes that you can't accomplish as well with the markers.  However, I like the expressive brush line quality you get with the large brush markers.  I would like to combine these two methods in future studies.

Loosen Up!

My main goal with my drawings this year is to loosen my line work and give more animation to the figure.  Since my current project this semester is a sports-themed graphic novel, having an understanding of the figure in motion as well as utilizing dramatic perspectives and character expressions, are key for making this project engaging and successful to my viewers.  Many early studies of Rayne and Riza (the two main characters of my story) were stiff, flat, and generic.  I am also influenced from the manga style.  I have been trying to broaden my range with my artist research outside of just manga and comic artists.  Some of the fine artists I've researched so far include:  Isabel Bishop (loose line work), Michael Angelo (figure studies = amazing), Jacopo Pontormo (longation of the figure), and Francisco de Goya (narrative prints).  Some of the manga/comic artists I'm looking at include:  Ashley Wood (Metal Gear Solid), Frank Miller (Sin City, of course), Yasuhiro Nightow (Trigun), Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), and Ito Oogure (Air Gear).

In my character concept art, I am still experiencing problems with proportions, foreshortening, motion, and expressions of the characters.  While my goal isn't to render them realistically in the graphic novel, I still want them to be believable to the viewer.  It was for these reasons that I joined drawing co op at the beginning of the semester.  My inventing skills are still inexperienced and underdeveloped, so I need a model for referencing my characters and their poses.  I also want to continue studying the human form so I can be more expressive with it and capture the energy of my characters in my work.

I also use quick gesture poses to help me draw my characters in these same poses later.  I began doing more gestures outside of drawing co op to get specific poses I wanted to illustrate my characters in.  Gesture drawings have also been helping me loosen my line work.

I also discovered this semester that I really like sketching in colored pencil rather than just pencil.  I feel more freedom with exploring the form of the figure and how I want it on the page.  Colored pencil also cannot be easily erased, so I'm not tempted to fix every line that doesn't work.  Using the colors also helps me build value in my sketches.  This makes me less hesitant to add in the ink marks over the finished colored pencil sketch.  I'm enjoying the interaction between colored pencil and ink.