Monday Morning Minnie & Marty -- 2-18-08

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This week I've returned to my quest for simplification, but as you can see the results were mixed. Minnie's tufts of fur and Marty's musculature proved too interesting for me to gloss over. That's okay, because overall the image feels the same. Well, except for Marty's face. It's perhaps a little too simplified, and those eyes are too big. He looks a little too "Muppet Babies" for my liking.

Actually, upon closer study, I think Marty's whole body is a bit more simplified and streamlined than Minnie's. That's not necessarily bad, either -- when you're drawing two subjects, it's often important to highten the contrast between them. Since Minnie's fur is longer and wilder than Marty's, the drawing should exaggerate the difference. I've started drawing Marty more short and stocky since we got Minnie, because she's thinner and lankier.

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Monday Morning Marty -- February 11, 2008

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It seems all I post anymore are Monday Morning Marties and Minnies!

This little portrait of Marty was done in pencil, then scanned and the tone grayscale tone work was put in digitally.

It looks like Marty is looking to someone hoping for a treat! (Don't worry -- he got one!)

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Monday Morning Marty -- February 4, 2008

(Click on image for larger version)

This week I continue on the theme of simplification.

These gesture sketches of Marty (and one of Minnie -- can you guess which one?) show the value of simplification. The idea is to get the gesture, the movement of the dog, not to dwell on details like fur markings or shading. This is a good technique to help learn anatomy and proportion.

I recently learned that some people don't know they can get a larger, more detailed version of the images here by clicking on them. If you don't know that -- you do now!

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Monday Morning Minnie -- 1-28-08

Following my push last week to simplify my dog drawings, this one is very simple indeed. Minnie is a shock of black with those captivating orange eyes -- one of the workers at the rescue shelter where we got her used to call her "Crazy Eyes."

One of the secrets, in my mind, of effectively capturing a likeness or impression in a simple drawing is to first draw it out from memory. You're more likely to put down the noteworthy, unique attributes of a character and leave out the unnecessary details if you can't see those details in front of you. I first did this drawing from memory, then I called Minnie in -- she always comes when you call her name! -- and double-checked the general proportions and such.

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One New Year's Resolution: Watch The Hills!

I usually don't make big New Year's Resolutions (with the big "R"), as such. I'm more the type to make little resolutions (with a small "r") throughout the year, as the ideas come to me. So this resolution (small "r") just happens to come to me on January 2nd. Coincidence.

I'm working on some storyboards for some anti-drug ads, aimed at teenagers. So I'm drawing teenagers. I've never been too fashion-conscious, especially young women's fashion, and I know I need to do better with that. My wife Jennifer likes to point out how often my "trendy" young people tend to look more like they're following the trends of the 1980s. Oops.

So my resolution is to observe current fashions more and try to note them whenever possible, so that I'll be more familiar with what the kids today are wearing and not have to go look up reference all the time. Specifically, I'm going to watch The Hills.

For those of you who are like me, and who otherwise wouldn't know, The Hills is a so-called "reality show" following a group of young women in L.A. and watching their terrible tastes in young men. My wife likes to watch it -- it's one of her few "mindless" programs, what she calls "comfort TV." I'm not a fan, but I'll sometimes watch it with her because she likes it, and I like her.

But now my resolution is to watch it carefully, noticing the fashions and talking to my wife about them. She has her finger of the pulse of current pop culture, and will be able to tell me which outfits are the most popular, which are no their way out, or not appropriate, or whatever. I may even do some sketching while I'm watching. But either way, I'll make fashion awareness a major reason to watch.

Well that, and to see if Heidi finally dumps that Spencer dude once and for all...!

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Monday Morning Marty -- 12-10-07

Today's Monday Morning Marty takes us back a few years. This is Marty as a puppy, about three and a half years ago. Hard to believe it's been that long. Such a Sweetie!

The picture uses a Micron pen, most of it using the same line width. The result reminds me of illustrations from the 1970s, which were often traced from photos (as this one was) and have that expressive cross-hatching intermixed with a close tight following of the original photo. In this case the hatching was used to simulate the grass that Marty was sitting in. I put the hatching in fairly loosely, less interested in capturing detail than I was in making a general impression, and in creating a gray tone that Marty's white body could stand out against.

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Monday Morning Marty & Minnie: Comparison

This sketch was done as a comparative study of Marty and Minnie's chests.

Though they're both roughly the same size, Marty is a lot heavier than Minnie. That's because Marty is solid muscle, whereas Minnie is mostly fur.

In this sketch comparison, you can see Marty's barrel chest on the right. He's got the muscles. His wide chest accounts for his front legs being so far apart.

Minnie's front legs are often far apart, as they are in this sketch, but that's more to do with poor posture than athletic physique. You can see her chest is a lot less bulging, a lot less muscular. And much of the volume that's there is her longer fur.

The odd perspective regarding the legs and tail, etc., are due to the fact that both the dogs were sitting right in front of me while I sketched, so I was looking down at a sharp angle. At first they were hard to keep still, but the more attention I'd give one, the more the other would want it, and they quickly figured out that sitting still was their way to get it. Quick learners, these two.

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Monday Morning Marty & Minnie!

The other day Marty and Minnie were tugging on the same stick. It was really cute, so we took a few pictures.

I used one of those pictures as reference for this drawing. I decided to do another woodcut technique, like I did back in August. Since the technique requires that the image be drawn in negative, then reversed digitally, it's difficult to visualize as I'm drawing -- every black line I drawn in ink will become a white line, and wherever the white paper is left will be black. So it's difficult to gauge exactly how it'll look. That presents a challenge, but also makes the project fun -- the end result is always a surprise.

I did retouch the image a little, around the dogs' eyes and some of the outlines. But overall, it turned out as I expected.

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Introducing Monday Morning Minnie!

Now that she's been with us a week, and begun to settle in here (?) It's time to give Minnie her formal introduction. Notice the black coat and those piercing orange eyes! Okay, you can't tell they're orange from a black-and-white sketch, but I was able to capture the piercing part. And those ears that tuck down onto her head -- sometimes you can't see them at all, and then she really looks odd.

I mentioned last week that Marty's first reaction to her was a bit -- well, aggressive. Well now they get on like a house on fire! They jump on each other like Grecko-Roman wrestlers, trying to get underneath each other and flip, trying to pin each other down. Their play is so fierce it's frightening -- Minnie will bite on Marty's face and pull on it, and Marty will bite Minnie's ears -- but it's all in fun. The tails keep wagging, and moments later when they're tired out, they'll just fall asleep next to each other. Crazy.

This sketch was done in pencil, then scanned and the tones added digitally. When I augment a sketch like this, I like to keep it minimal. There's a danger of the digital effects taking over, and it's easy to go overboard, but I want the piece to still feel like a sketch.

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Monday Morning Marty -- Marty in the Rio Grande!

Yes, the Monday Morning Marty is back!

This weekend Jennifer and I took Marty to the banks of the Rio Grande, which is about a mile from our new house. Marty had never seen a big river like this, and we didn't know how he'd react.

After a little initial trepidation, Marty took to the water like... well, like a duck to water. He loved it! We tossed sticks for him to fetch, and he loved jumping through the water to get to them! At one point he found the rather disgusting skull of what we hope was a coyote, and despite our repeated attempts to get rid of it he kept bringing it back. He was a muddy mess by the end of it, prompting a long-delayed bath when we got him home.

These are sketches of a couple of my memories of the adventure. He sure loved diving into that water! We'll have to take him back again, the next time he's due for a bath.

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Shangri La

Last year I drew a large full-body portrait of Lutcher Stark for Shangri La.

Shangri La is a botanical garden and nature center in Orange, Texas, which is southeast TX near the Louisiana border. It's scheduled to open in March 2008.

Lutcher Stark was a lumber heir who took his family's land, bought more to augment it, and turned it into a botanical garden. He especially loved azaleas and camellias. In the late '50s, a "killing frost" destroyed much of his garden, and he closed it, heartbroken. It was more or less left to the elements since then and became a pretty wild place, but a haven for animals and birds. Now the Stark Foundation is reopening it to the public. This exhibit is in the visitor center and is part of an introduction to the place.

I was hired to draw Mr. Stark in a style similar to that of a naturalist's sketch book. I'm not sure I quite pulled that off, but the designers were happy with the final product, and so am I.

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Monday Morning Marty -- 8-20-07

I'm cheating on this one -- twice.

Once because I didn't draw this just for the blog. This is a close-up of an illustration in progress I'm working on for Cisneros Design in Santa Fe, for a fundraiser invitation to benefit an animal rescue organization.

The other cheat is that I didn't ask Fred Cisneros, or the animal rescue organization, if I could use the image. I'm hoping they'll understand.

It was, in part, my Monday Morning Marty series that convinced the client I could draw dogs for this assignment, so what better dog to use for it? (That other dog in the picture is just a model. We've never actually met.)

I always find it harder to draw a specific individual for an illustration, rather than a fictional character, even if the individual in question is a canine one. After all, when I'm making someone up, no one but me will know if I get the likeness exactly the way I envisioned. And I never say. But when I'm drawing someone's portrait, suddenly I have a measurable standard to be judged against. Yikes, that's scary! If I hadn't been drawing the Monday Morning Marties I wouldn't have had the confidence to even try this one.

Oh, and if you didn't catch the moral in all this -- ironic in a post about cheating -- it's this: whenever you put your stuff out there, good things result. My Monday Morning Marty series turned out to be good portfolio samples as well as a weekly exercise and a segue into moralistic lecturing. I've found that whenever I do work for fun, it seems to become a means to paying work. My long-running comics series Jazz Age (originally Jazz Age Chronicles) has been an off-and-on labor of love for twenty years now, and though it's hardly ever made much money, every good-paying comics job I've ever got, I got from samples of Jazz Age. All you freelancers out there, listen up: Get your stuff out there. If it's good, it'll produce results.

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Confession: I Draw on Letter-Size Copy Paper!

One of the first things you learn as a working freelance illustrator is when you can cut corners and when you can't. Or more appropriately: What's important.

When I first started out, fresh out of art school, I had learned the importance of using the right equipment, the best paper, the most precise and elaborate methods. We had been indoctrinated from our freshman year in the importance of proper technique. We learned to be precise, thorough and detail-oriented. And, above all, we learned not to cut corners.

Well, those techniques and procedures are fine as a starting point, but over time you learn to develop your own methods and routines, ones that are attuned to the importance you put on things.

In a previous post I talked about the procedure I use to create comic strip artwork. It took me years to develop this technique. For years, concerned with the "proper" way of doing things, I had a much more labor-intensive method; I'd cut down large sheets of Bristol board, used Rapid-o-Graph pens for all the ruled lines and (GASP) the lettering, and everything else was done with a pure sable brush and India ink. Anything else wouldn't be kosher, I told myself; anything else would be a cheat.

Well, thank God I got over that mentality. Now most of the line work I do comes from Micron pens. I still use a brush for most of my more realistic comics illustration, like Jazz Age, but 90% of Annie is done with the pens now. And as I'd gone over before, the lettering is now done in InDesign! The pure Bristol Board has been replaced by 11" x 17" 80-pound matte cover stock and fed through the printer for the lettering and panel boarders.

For most of my other freelance work, I draw on good ol' letter-size copy paper. ( I originally put "typing paper" before realizing that it hasn't been called that in a few decades!) It works as well as any kind of paper for inked line work, it's cheap, easy to find, easy to scan or fax -- the only down side is when the job calls for the original being given to the client, which has happened less than half a dozen times in the twenty years I've been doing this. On those jobs, I break out the thicker card stock. (This, of course, is in the context of the freelance work. For the comics work, I still use the card stock that's very much like Bristol board because there is a market for the original art.)

In short, I figured out what's really important: Do what works. Get the job done as well, as quickly and as reliably as you can.

People are paying me for the digital file of an image. They don't care what paper it was drawn on, or even if it was drawn on paper at all. It doesn't matter to them that I drew it with India ink, or if it was on 100% rag content paper. They want their image, and whatever is the best, easiest way to make it is the proper way.

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Monday Morning Marty 8-6-07 -- Fur

Here's a little portrait of Marty to start your week.

When you're drawing a furry creature, like Puppy here, your pencil strokes can do more than just follow the contour of the general shape -- they can take on the qualities of the fur itself. If you notice, very few of the actual lines in this drawing follow the edge of Marty's head -- they follow the direction and the length of the fur, and the succession of these lines creates the contour. This lets me convey not just the shape of the head, but the direction of the fur, the thickness, and in some places helps suggest the cheekbone and other structure beneath. It's important to be economical in your drawing, and to let every stroke, every line contribute as much as possible to communicating your subject.

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Monday Morning Marty -- 7-30-07

For today's Monday Morning Marty, instead of a single image, I decided on a series of quick gesture drawings. I'd said last week that I wanted to keep the Marty drawings loose and fun, to make them more of a series of studies than worry about perfect image-making or slick, polished illustration. So this week I'm pushing that to its ultimate.

Quick gestures like these make great warm-ups before going into more detailed illustration, and they make excellent study and learning guides for getting familiar with a subjects proportions, mannerisms or expressions. But they're also great drawings in and of themselves, as they capture a quick snapshot of a moment. In the fact that the strokes and lines are quick, unpolished and unrefined, they can reveal as much about the artist as about the subject.

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Monday Morning Marty -- July 23, 2007

Here's my contribution to the Monday Morning Marty catalogue for this week. It was drawn from a live model, not from a photograph. I have no problem with drawing from photos -- most of my work uses photo reference, including several of my Marty drawings. But one of the reasons for taking on the weekly Marty drawing series was to get back to drawing for the sake of drawing, and drawing from live models, and drawing just for the fun of it.

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How I Make A Comic Strip

Welcome to my summary of putting together a comic strip. Or at least, my way of putting together a comic strip. This isn't going to be "how to draw" (I'm sure I'll cover something along those lines before too long) so much as it is "how to set up to draw."

Everyone needs a system for putting together a comic strip. Drawing comics is as much a job as it is a calling -- and on days when you don't really hear that calling, it's still a job. And for most cartoonists, it's not a very good paying job. So it's essential that you have a system in place, a streamlined and standardized way of going about the task. I draw seven strips for Annie a week -- six dailies plus the color Sunday strip -- and I need to get that work done quickly and get it out the door by deadline, and still leave time for other freelance work, my webcomic Jazz Age (I'm on hiatus right now, but it's usually a full-color strip written and drawn every week) and, if I'm lucky, my family. I don't want to waste any time here. I need to get the boring stuff out of the way, to give me the most time actually drawing, and get it all done fast.

The system I show won't work for everyone. It may not even work for anyone, except that it works for me. Other comics artists use other systems -- maybe some of them will comment here on theirs -- but this is the one that has evolved for me. Even if none of this is applicable to you, young apprentice, I hope you at least come away with an appreciation for the need for a system.

The process begins with the script, which is written by Jay Maeder and gets to me from my editor, Tracy Clark. the script tells me who's doing what, who says what and what is being shown in each panel. Since we've worked together for some time now -- just over three years -- Jay and I have a pretty good understanding of what each other wants and expects, so his scripts are not very detailed. He trusts me to know the right angles to show things in, and to make the new characters interesting and appropriate.

After reading through the script, I go to my layout worksheet. This is a worksheet I made up that gives me little boxes, scaled-down versions of the individual strips, and lets me sketch out the six dailies on one page. These layouts are loose and sketchy -- since I'm the only one who needs to refer to them and since I'll be drawing the final art in a day or so, I don't need to go into much detail -- I'll remember what I had in mind. The most important aspect of the layouts is to show roughly where all the important elements are.

The next step surprises some people. I do the final lettering. Years ago I made the best investment of a couple hundred hours I could ever have made -- I created a digital version of my own hand lettering, in Fontographer. And I made alternative versions of most of the letters, which you can access by hitting OPTION with the letter, so double letters don't look quite so obvious. I also made up a library of word balloons in Quark -- which I've since transferred to InDesign -- that I can put the lettering into, and which are resizable and adaptable to any need. Using the layouts as a guide, and an InDesign template that has the strip dimensions preformatted, I create the panel sizes and add the lettering balloons, copying and pasting the dialogue directly from the script emailed to me by Tracy.

Why do I do the lettering first? After years of frustration with trying to make lettering balloons fit a tight space because I underestimated it when I drew the panel, or having to cover up some really nice background art I drew with a balloon, I realized that the artwork was more adaptable than the lettering. It's easier, in other words, to make a figure, or a face, a little bigger or smaller in the panel to fit the space after the balloons are put in than to make the balloon bigger or smaller to fit the space after the artwork is put in. A figure, or a face, can be partially cut off and still work -- words are rarely that flexible.

Once the lettering and layouts are completed, I print them out on good card stock. I used to pay a small fortune to buy Bristol board pads, cut them down to size and throw away the extras -- they never did learn to make those pads 11 x 17" -- and then start doing the lettering by hand. Now, I can buy 11 x 17" card stock and print out the lettering, all ready to go, for a lot less! Even before I got my large printer, and had to email the InDesign files to a printer to output onto the card stock, it was still cheaper than buying the Bristol board. And it works just as well for drawing on. Nearly. It's not quite as thick, so it can warp if you lean and sweat on it too much. Oh well -- everything's a trade-off.

So now, with the lettering and panel borders printed on the card stock -- I put two dailies on one 11 x 17" sheet, or half of a Sunday strip -- I'm ready to get down and draw. Which, as I mentioned, I'll have to cover another time.

With the line art all done, I scan the artwork. Until I invest in an 11 x 17" scanner, I have to make two scans of each page and splice them together. Then I clean up the scans, and send the strips to the editor for approval. Ta-daah!

For the Sunday strips, after I scan the artwork, I create a color guide for the print house, which they use to put together the final color files for the newspapers. That'll also be another post.

So there you have it. My system. My regular process for breaking down a very large job into bite-size pieces and taking care of them in order. Like I said, it may not work for others, but it works for me. Every week. Now I feel tired.

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Monday Morning Marty -- 7/16/07

Here's the Monday Morning Marty for this week -- and instead of the usual pencil sketch or line drawing, I went with a different approach, and digitally altered a photo of Marty into a painting look. I still plan to have the Monday Morning Marty series be predominantly sketches, drawings and maybe the occasional real painting, but digital illustration is legitimate, too. So today you get a little variety.

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Monday Morning Marty

This week's Monday Morning Marty was drawn on Sunday afternoon, after Marty had had a nice long fetch session in the park near my in-laws' house in Albuquerque. Since we moved here, Marty's really been enjoying himself. He just couldn't get this relaxed and have this much fun in Philadelphia. The closest he every came was at my parents' house, which has a beautiful big lawn just like the park here. Marty loves fetching the tennis ball at full speed about a hundred times, then for some reason he's tired. Like he was here.

The drawing, like previous Marty drawings, was first done in pencil, then gone over with a Micron pen. I liked the line work as is, so I didn't color this one.

He looks pretty happy, I think. He's wearing his red bandanna. So cute.

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Monday Morning Marty -- July 1, 2007

Here's my Monday Morning Marty for the week -- just a quick sketch of the pup while he sits in his kennel. We have another dog staying with us a couple of days, while her owners, family members, are on vacation, and while she eats, Marty stays in his kennel. Perfect opportunity to sketch the ol' hound dog.

Still the least happy with the head. He moves it around too much. As I get more practiced drawing him, I'll be able to do it quicker, and capture the gesture more accurately. But this does look like him. Especially that sweet, hangdog expression. And the crossed paws in front. He's so classy sometimes!

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Monday Morning Marty

Today begins a regular weekly feature on ShopTalk, Monday Morning Marty. A new sketch of my beautiful puppy Marty every week.

This week I worked from a photo. We just moved back to New Mexico from Philadelphia, and Marty -- who's from New Mexico and who can tell when we're entering the state by the scents coming in the car's vents, and who really didn't like most of Philly -- is having too much fun and is too excited to sit still and pose for me. The photo was taken last winter, during one of the few snowstorms Philly had. You see Marty's tail is down -- I told you he didn't like Philly. It hasn't been down since we got here.

I decided to try a limited palette coloring effect, recreating the spot-color look of old magazine illustrations. The picture needed a little punch. I thought blue was a natural choice, conveying the cold of the scene. I was originally going to just use the one color, but when I tried giving Marty a simplified version of his own hazel coloring, it worked.

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Multi-Tasking Hand

This is an odd thing to confess, and I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but -- I think my hand doesn't write as well when it's been drawing.

Let me explain.

On the best of days, my handwriting is pretty bad, as anyone who's seen it can confirm. My writing is usually a block lettering anyway -- yes, like the kind used in comics -- because my cursive, and even my upper-and-lower-case print writing, are rather -- unsophisticated, shall we say.

But when I'm in the middle of drawing, it's a lot worse.

I just came upon this thought now, as I'm drawing up the layouts for another week's worth of Annie strips. I have these pre-printed blanks I made up, with a rectangle representing the strip, some guidelines marking the 1/2, 1/3 and 2/3 spots, and lots of room on the sides for notations about the sketches, which aren't very elaborate. Jennifer has commented occasionally about how I never use those notes areas, and just now, as I was writing a little comment about what one of the characters was doing, I realized why.

I can't write worth crap while I'm sketching.

Maybe writing and drawing use different parts of the brain. That makes sense, since they're very different ways of seeing, and different ways of thinking. And since creating images and putting down letterforms are very different ways of using the same hand muscles, maybe transitioning quickly from the one to the other causes some stumbling -- like shifting gears in a car without properly using the clutch or something.

And maybe, since I'm an illustrator through and through, and since that's what I've always been, maybe that's why my handwriting has always been so bad. Maybe, as soon as I pick up the pencil or pen, my drawing instincts take over, and don't want to surrender control to the writing part of my brain.

I know this is an odd theory. I don't even know if it's true that I screw up my writing more often when I'm in the middle of sketching or not. It seems to be, but who knows? And I don't know what possible practical application this could have, other than to try pausing a moment when switching from one to the other -- like waiting for the clutch to engage in the car. Maybe just being aware of this brain change will be enough to improve the situation. I'll let you know what progress, if any, I see.

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Drawing of My Dog, Part 1

My wife Jennifer believes in drawing for fun.

Wow. What a concept.

She's started her own blog, The Daily Mammal, wherein she will draw a new mammal every day. If she keeps it up, she can draw every named mammal in just 14 years! Wow! But whether she does or not, she's having fun. And she's always telling me I should draw for fun. Not for an assignment, or for a deadline. But for fun.

Fun.

Fun?

Well, tonight I gave it a try, sketching our dog Marty. Here's the result.

Not bad for my first attempt at drawing him. And not bad for my first sketch from life in a long time. It even kind of looks like him. Okay, it looks a lot like him. Not perfect, but pretty good. I'm sure this won't be the last time I draw Marty, and I'm sure my next one will be even better.

But you know what? I had fun.

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