Found Art

I've been thinking about doing some art outside of the sketchbook I usually draw in. So I decided to try and complete a piece for an art show coming up soon. As I was pulling out some mat boards I found this old unfinished drawing.

I kind of remember this drawing, but honestly I don't even know how old it is. I would say maybe 8 years at least. It's an alright drawing, nothing special or great but I kind of like the fish tail on the lower-left hand side. I tried to take a good closeup picture of the fin to show better detail. This is the best I could do.

closeup of partially finished fish

unfinished ink drawing

Ballpoint Pen Practice

I've either taken a break from drawing or just been lazy recently because I haven't been keeping up with posts this year. Usually I start up again whenever I see something, or someone, that inspires me. This time it was the work of Jim Rugg whose work I first became familiar with from the Drawn Blog which I frequent on a daily basis. His ballpoint pen drawings are awesome to say the least.

They remind me of old drawings and sketches I used to do in class a long time ago when I was in high school. I would have 3-5 sheets of notebook paper stacked on top of one another. The top one or two sheets I would use for actual note taking. The next couple of sheets were the ones I used for drawing and then I would usually have a final bottom sheet to give the ones I was drawing on a softer surface so that it would be easier to shade and bring about a smoothness to the pen, rather than pen and paper on a hard solid surface. Had I kept all the "doodles" (I hate that word) that I created back then (and some in college), I would have at least a hundred. But sadly they're all gone... Then again, I doubt they were even as good as I thought they were back then.

Unfinished practice in ballpoint

I wanted to try it again. Even though I mentioned in earlier posts that I was going to try ballpoint pens again, I have yet to fully experiment with them (besides this drawing). I'm going to look into getting a set of colored pens and really bust out an actual, complete drawing. Until then, there's this one from my moleskine.

Obviously it's not finished and I don't plan on finishing it unless I feel that I could add more to it. It started as a picture I found online, but mostly though the face and right arm are what I took from the original. Once I started with the pen he looked different from what I had planned so I changed it up quite a bit. So much so that even if you saw the picture you wouldn't find much, if any, similarities.

Finished Face (Ink & Marker Complete)

Fully inked

I've finally gotten around to finishing this drawing... well, as finished as it can be. I still need to go over it in ink and color again to get some of the patchy spots and fill in some of the ink that faded when I erased all the visible pencil markings. But it's done for the most part.

The first drawing is the completed ink version which, I have to admit, looks really good. Actually it looks better than the real version in my sketchbook. I think that's because of the high contrast when scanning a black and white photo with my scanner.

Fully colored

I think I might try some color changes on the inked version in Photoshop just to see what other colors it might have looked good in. Considering that now, I should have done that to begin with before I colored it in. I didn't really have a color scheme in mind when I started adding color, but luckily it came out looking good.

Finished Pencil Drawing (Face)

So it took me alot longer than I thought it would (but considering I'm a big time procrastinator I guess maybe it was sooner than I thought?) but I finally finished this drawing... at least the penciling. All I have left to do is the inking. Which may be the hardest part next to actually coming up with what to draw. And of course, I still have yet to purchase the Koh-I-Noor pens, which are out of stock until 12/22. I think I might have to buy some other pens in the meanwhile. That, or just use one tip size throughout the whole thing.

If you look back at the previous version(s) of it, you can see how much has changed since I first started it. And actually, when I originally started drawing I began with only the face. I really didn't have much of a goal, which is the way I usually go into a new piece (sketchbook or otherwise). Sometimes that can be a good thing, but other times it may not work out the way I had hoped. But I think this did. Hopefully the ink and color come out the way I hope they do. The next step after I've finished is to maybe do something similar on a larger scale.

Mechanical Face (Unfinished) [cont]

Rather than just update my previous post I decided to start an new one since I tend to lag sometimes. That, and it gives me an excuse to have more content. Luckily, this is a short one.

I started working on the drawing more and, like I had said earlier, it turned out completely different than what I had originally started. I think the only part still there from the beginning is the top layer of teeth and nose. If you look at the post below you can see the big differences. I honestly thought that previous drawing was going to more or less be the final product (in terms of the face at least).

So I'm going to add more to the left side of the page since right now it's basically just the face. And I'm going to continue with the whole steam/smoke (not sure yet which of the two it will eventually be) throughout the background. And of course, I'll post the finished pencil drawing, if anything just to drag it on until I have new content (like I always do).