Perspective drawing cheat

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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.

Wyeth

This evening I watched an old South Bank Show about Andrew Wyeth.  What he had to say on the subject of painting was very interesting.  Firstly he described how other painters had turned from realism to abstract painting because, in their words, they had "exhausted the possibilities" of realism.  Wyeth's riposte to that was that they had exhausted the possibilities within themselves, and revealed their own shallowness.  The other point he made, a couple of times, was that you had to wait for the perfect moment in time to capture a picture.  He said that taking a photo (or painting from a photo) doesn't suffice, because you have to be present in the moment.

Razorback Pictures 4

Another one.  I assembled the "hovercycle" by adapting an existing model, stripping away quite a bit of its' body and then adding on parts of my own using Wings and parts from Doga-L1.

Doga is a Japanese program that allows a user to assemble models - robot, spaceship, etc. - from a built-in collection of parts and animate them.  I've never used it for animation, but have found that the parts, which can be exported in DXF format, are brilliant for use in making sci-fi models.

The biggest pain with Poser is actually posing the figures.  It has got easier over time, however, especially since I learned to use Inverse Kinematics.

Razorback Pictures 3

Another one.  I wanted an image that shows Razorback in his capacity as child-minder, protecting the innocent.

Razorback Pictures 2

A couple more reference pics for my Razorback story, both showing scenes from the third chapter.  The bottom one is a giant insects' nest, and I think it's turned out looking quite pretty.