Developments

I have put the coloured pencils away for the time being and embraced traditional drawing with good old grey lead pencils. So far the results have been encouraging. I previously ditched lead pencils because they didn't "grip" the paper enough, but I've recently bought a pad of paper from WH Smiths that has enough of a grain to provide the friction that I need to produce controlled lines. There are few things worse when trying to draw a picture than having one's control reduced by excessively smooth paper or excessively slippy pencils.

My evening yesterday was spent downloading models from the DAZ website. They were all models - characters, clothes, props, scenery - that I'd purchased or got free from DAZ previously but which I still have active download links for on their site. My plan is to make an ordered directory of models on my computer in order to have easily-accessible models to use as reference for pictures. I have more or less given up on using Poser to create 3d art and have fully embraced using the program as an artists' reference tool (the purpose for which Poser was originally created and for which I originally bought it before getting sidelined into producing digitally-rendered art). I've done a few pictures of characters from my Razorback story using modified Poser models, and am very happy with the resulting images, with the exception of the sole human character, who I can't draw for toffee, for some reason.

I also spent some time last night looking into an issue with one of my 3d characters. There's been quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with this one. A while back I sent a model of a monkey to my friend and expert rigger in the States. He produced a rig for the character, but then asked me to re-do the UV mapping for the model as the original texture map was fragmented and very un-user-friendly. This I duly did, only to get a message back saying that the material groups on the figure all now had their names prefixed with "monkey_", which caused him major difficulties in the rigging process.
I managed to find a way to change the material group names in Hexagon, but doing so appears to have completely wiped the texture mapping from the renamed material, which takes me back to square 1.

Writing quote

Someone (and for the life of me, I can’t remember who!) once said that whatever story you’re working on should be written as if it’s the only one you’ll ever tell—pouring all your thoughts, feelings, ideas, ideals, passions, philosophies, hopes and dreams...every iota of Who You Are...into it.  That’s what I did with Moonshadow.
J. M. DeMatteis

Transience

My much-neglected website needs some new pictures added, particularly in the cartoons section. I'm afraid over the past year most of my energies have been diverted into producing pencil drawings to be posted on Instagram, which returns instant gratification in the form of "likes" from other users, but is unprofitable in the long term. I saw a TED Talk last night on YouTube which listed reasons for not being on social media, and one of the reasons given by the speaker was that users of social media lose their ability to apply themselves to tasks that take time but yield long-term benefits.

Portraiture

I have been temporarily sidelined into doing portrait work. My brother asked for a picture of himself for Christmas, and a work colleague has requested pictures of himself, his wife and his newborn child.

So far, so good. My brother laughed out loud at my picture of him, which was his head on Bruce Lee's body (he wanted to be portrayed in a martial arts pose). He seemed pleased with the picture but said he felt it could use a splash of red somewhere, which I agreed with. I have taken custody of the picture until I can figure out a way to add colour without potentially ruining it.

Adults are pretty straightforward to draw. Babies, on the other hand, have different proportions and are harder to get right. Ideally, if somebody asks you to draw their baby, you want to make it look adorable rather than creepy (if you want to be asked again).

Perspective drawing cheat

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNZ3JDDBkh3/

Bumps in the road

Having produced a couple of business card designs using a template that I found online (see previous post) I uploaded them to a printer's website last week, only to discover that the dimensions I'd used weren't standard business card dimensions.  The template that I used was, I assume, for hardcore artistic professionals who print their own cards.  I spent Friday evening re-doing the cards to use the correct dimensions, regretting the wasted time.
These are the sorts of things that vaccuum up the time.  It is very rare that any artistic project, no matter how small, turns out right on the first go, and occasionally something will have to be done over from scratch as there will be no way to salvage what I've already done.  I have a number of pictures on the go at the moment, that are being held up by various factors - refererence material isn't available, or there are technical issues, or I just can't make a decision regarding which approach works best with a particular picture.

Artists' Reference

Believe it or not, there was a time long ago, when I thought that all comic book artists made up every single image in their stories out of their heads.  This idea was reinforced by reading  "How to draw comics the Marvel way" by Stan Lee, which demonstrated how John Buscema would construct scenes and characters completely from scratch, beginning with lines, cubes and cylinders, with other details filled in afterwards.  Believing that this was the only way to draw comics, I attempted to imitate Mr Buscema, only to find, sadly, that all the resulting figures looked like robots.
Later on, I got into artists like Jon J Muth and Bill Sienkiewicz, whose artwork was more lifelike, and I began to suspect that there was some photo-referencing going on.  The clincher came when Muth illustrated a book whose hero bore a suspicious resemblance to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.  He illustrated further stories "starring" Marcel Duchamp and Anthony Hopkins, their likenesses having been lifted from photos and film stills.  Although I'm now not one to play the "cheat" card with artists, at the time I couldn't help being a little judgemental, particularly as my teachers at art college had told me that I shouldn't draw from photos.
Muth is not unique in this regard, however.  With the standard of reproduction in comics having improved, painterly artwork and photo-realism have become industry standards.  Occasionally it is possible to identify the source of some of the artist's figures.  With some artists, it is a little harder to tell where that familiar face has come from, and that nagging sense of familiarity becomes a distraction.

Occasionally, use of found imagery can land an artist in hot water.  Back in the nineties, Jackson Guice drew a cover for an issue of Doctor Strange, lifting an image of Amy Grant from one of her album covers.  Grant's management, not wanting Grant associated with the occult content of a Doctor Strange comic, took legal action and had the comic withdrawn from bookshelves.