Years ago i went to a sleep away summer camp, where oddly i met two people whom were huge artistic influences on me. One was a Boston writer, the other was a free time portrait artist. Thinking about it know it was a super coincidence on both parts, and kinda leads me to believe life as a way of providing things you need if your paying attention. At any rate this portrait artist, whos name is slipping my mind(read ive plum forgotten, it was over 20 years ago), both intellectually explained and showed me over the summer his methodology for figure drawing. What he did was sort of squint at his subject, thus reducing what he saw to a series of tonal areas or shapes, instead of looking at and intellectually trying to reproduce a figure he was just drawing shapes with different tonal values. This then became the base for the drawing and he would push and pull the shapes tones and spacial relations. He basically generalized until he had enough information to begin to become more specific. it was a process the involved a lot of layers and building of mass through shade. It was a revolution for me at the time and inspired a few years of mimicking his style and approach. Ive wanted to get away from just line work in my drawings for a while as they are getting kinda of stiff, so why not try and work in shades and tones. INstead of cross hatching i used the good old never ending circle.

took a photo of this page with the still camera part of it, indoord no light save form the window.

Got a new Set of Copic pens today and a replacement nib set as well. Need to figure out how to mix their brown and black ink to get a nice warm dark.

i might have to keep this one. I think the official boxes should jsut have one painted side or be themed thus easier to name, keep track of and differentiate between.

No Im not accustomed to being offered products, so like a true rookie, i kinda picked a random set of colors that when i got them i realized they didn’t all make for a banging color scheme together; good good colors just not all in the same family or value. I was more taken by each color instead of thinking how they would work together. Well experience be dammed, i got what i got and am now scheming on getting the full line of the larger refills.

The first things I did with the ink was to play around with how it took to various surfaces, paper, plastic, metal, paint, cardboard; CHECK. Next up. They are Refills, dump ink out and use a brush; the smaller refills come with a little spouty deal so you can refill markers and or draw with various degrees of controlled drips. So with out much for thought minus a quick pencil sketch i then ignored i just started to draw with brush and black One4All ink on some record boxes i have. I always really dug the photos ive seen of old Jamaican mobile record shop trucks all hand painted and looking fresh, so i kinda moved in that direction with the boxes. The ink handled the brush real well, having a real good viscosity. The next best part of the brush experience was the ease at which with some soap and water, really just water, the brush was cleaned and ready for another color.

Pure 45 RPM Stereophonic KING UPTOWN SOUND

decorated 45 rpm box, painted with sumi brush and Molotow One4All Ink

Molotow golden yellow, zebster orange, Signal red paint, Black One4All ink Brushed on. Covered nice and solid, as did the white, although its not pictured here.

Using these Markers is almost like using gouache put into a marker for ease of use, the ink itself is super milky, and drips nice and opaque and matte. Covered All my under-drawing lines, which in some cases was Black Pen.  Im stoked you can get empty markers, refills of standardized colors and replacement nibs; I’m pretty sure Im converted and my Oil based paint pens are not going to get much out of their box time anytime soon.

For some reason i decided i need to draw Johnny Chimpo, but didn’t have the right colors but was bale to mix some of the brown oranges and whites to vary the chimpo tones. Because i was jsut farting around i ddint mix enough of the browns so i had to water them down a bit to cover the area i had, instead of mixing more. Laziness combined with fear of finishing things i might need more of later can be debilitating; trying to get over it and use.

The best part about the matte and acrylic base of this ink is unlike oil based paint markers, it doesnt have its pigment loosen and get goopy in the heat. I have a tone of old black books whos pages are fused together after the sun loosed the oils based paint only to render it a solid mass once cooled; Some pages ive had to resort to putting wax paper in between the pages and even then the ink oil based marker paint transfers itself to the wax.

So Ive concluded i need at there very least All the Primaries Molotov makes in the One4All line and then as many variants in between. Once the weather changes ill be getting paint so im starting an Ink fund now, as there will certainly be some  use of ink in future walls.

You can check out the full line of Molotow markers and inks here, of course they made this after i ordered my markers, but looks like there are better options than i first knew about. One of the coolest features is the nib system which looks like you can slap a Fine nib even on the medium sized markers.

pencil, watercolor pencil, water brush, white poster paint.

Right now im stuck in the novelty of regarding the legacy of the really good try-er. Those of us destined to be remembered along the lines of, ‘insert name here, gave it his/her all, they really tried’. In celebration of the average joe I drew, Super Bland man, a throw back to the days when all i did was draw super heros with incredible powers that could save the world and look cool while doing.

SuperBland Man, Mild on Crime, more of an ember than a fire.

This is what there was as far as a sketch for the rath piece,

the characters were based on a few off of this page below. Large Moleskine. Micron pen, gouache, water color;

Beginning sketch and partial view.

at this point the tide had gone out quite a bit, and it was getting kind of cold. Also seen is one of a trio of museum stool i got as ‘parting’ gifts upon finishing under graduate  studies; Best gifts ever. This bad boy has been all over the place, giving both ass comfort as well and more importantly, a step up. Its funny this is the second time in 14 years its been used to actually sit on and draw as it was intended for…

forgot the top to the newton travel watercolor set so i had to use the shells, they look cute but arent as usefull as they could be… i also didnt spend much time searching the bounty of shells for deeper ones. bleh.