Posts Tagged ‘process’

Bic rides again

Monday, June 21st, 2010

So I grabbed a bic from my desk so i would have one handy and did a few quick sketches instead of lunch and then started another one on the ride home.

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.

park Sitters

Bacon X Rath

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Bacon X Rath:

bacon x rath: Rath Ups Cod 3a

Ive been working slowly and spottily on this idea for a few years now. The idea of combining pieces, and have yet to really commit or propperly prepare a wall to do it the way i see it my head; For one reason or another the right time hasnt presented itself yet, or maybe i havent forced it yet. It started with this in Montreal about 2 years ago with this Re-Run X Rath* pictured at the bottom of post.  And Later that year, did this, “rated as Ideated” painful little jawn. IT seems like the more i did it the worse it got, a year ago was this, HeavyXRath.

So this weekend i got back on the fail horse and road out in hopes of doing a decent Bacon X Rath. And as it would happen it was a cool 92 degrees yesterday and the heat Kick the crap out of me. At one point i found myself lying on some concrete that was in the shade, my shirt was up so my back could cool off on the cooler concrete. I drank 2 gallons of water, two 16oz Tropicana Ojs, and a little bit of a Tropicana lemonade, which it turned out was lemon flavored not lemonade so that got trashed. RastaFari is a blessing but the Lox can be an oven in the hot heat and sun parade. There was a lot more background work and top letter integration i wanted to do, but I admitted defeat in the mid evening.

********* the olders…

re-Run X Rath:
Re-Run

Rath X rath: rated as ideated,
rated as ideated, thats progress related not success equated

Heavy X rath: Sloppy Thomas,
Sloppy Thomas

big mama and inspired beach dancer

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Big Red Mama, illustration by heavylox

I saw this woman the other day. She was walking so i couldnt really get a good drawing done, but in the brief time she passed me i did a quick sketch and then was inspired by her memory. She had a quintessential caricature-ish figure or one well suited to be embellished.

Beach dancer, Illustration by heavylox

More Good Times.

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Found some suppoting images over at http://www.molotow.com/magazine/blog/

Evening Reader

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Generic pink flourescent marker, coffee and napkin for base color. Rotring Artist color inks, Molotow One4all ink Copic Multi-liner.

One Four ALL X One4All

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

I recently was given the opportunity to get some support from Molotow, since Its winter and I was also expecting a new Edition to the house i figured id be spending the next little while more inside then outside. I asked, Im sure to the bewilderment of all involved for some One4All Molotow ink instead of paint. What writer would rather have some markers and ink over paint? I can answer that by posing you another question who has two thumbs loves to drawn and runs this site? Thats right This Guy, Hev.

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.

45-RPM

Pure 45 RPM Stereophonic KING UPTOWN SOUND

decorated 45 rpm box, painted with sumi brush and Molotow All4One Ink

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

Lion of Judah 45 RMP box

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.

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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.

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mixin

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.

painting

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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.

colorize it

Friday, January 15th, 2010

photoshop coloring

 

Been trying to use photoshop to color in some Moleskine pages. I haven’t quite got a good method to working it yet, but its pretty fun

StarBucked and photoChoppin.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

 

starBucks

 

previous versions:

Illustrator: Scan to vector – Part #2

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Part #1 here.

PART #2:

With ALL THE BASE Shapes created its time to start combining them to form more complex shapes Using mainly the Pathfinder Palette.

starting point:

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Ending point:

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Step 1:

Isolate the letters and plan the over laps; this can be tricky, as done in the wrong order you can end up combing or trimming unintended shapes. Luckily with ‘undo’ you can go back and or fix later with some more pathfider work or using the scissor tool to dissect some shapes again.

r-00

Isolated the main the body of the R and the two extensions that connect to the R body.
The top extension the comes out of the left top arm pit of the R; Since the extension needs to connect to the R and have it s chute  pass behind it, I selected both pieces and Trimmed them to remove the overlapping area of the extension. Because the resulting shapes all share a border I couldnt use the Combine function on the pathfinder so I used the scissor  tool to snip both the extension end and the arm pit. Deleting the end of the extension and separating the Arm pit points, i then selected the corresponding open points and joined them.

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Fill turned of you can see no overlapping outlines.

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Similar process to get the Left foot of the R and its kick extension squared away. It also involved some negotiating and trimming its over lap with the Rs main body.

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The completed R with only the top left extension un-trimmed. Added the negitave space of the R creating a Compound path so the shape will fill keep the negative space empty.

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Close too finished base letters, with top left extension and A sliced un-Trimmed, also the bottom Left leg of the H is yet unconnected to the heart. And the negative spaces in the heat of the T and the A need to be added.

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Illustrator: Scan to vector – Part #1

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

How i go about translating an scanned sketch into an Illustrator Drawing.

When i first started using illustrator I went about painstakingly trying to trace pretty complex images, not concerned with Illustrators most powerful feature, which is to create complexity by building from simplicity. Just like books aimed at teaching you how to draw illustrator is great when used to block and refine. Towards this end illustrator has an awesome set of drawing tools to help build generic shapes that can be combined with another tool (the PathFinder Tool; more about this one later)

Resources:
if you’re not familiar with the pen tool check out these links: http://school.tatoland.com/illustrator/aipentool.html & http://vector.tutsplus.com/tools-tips/illustrators-pen-tool-the-comprehensive-guide/

STEP #1:

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Scanned Drawing, opened in Illustrator. I set the transparency to 20% to help differentiate the vector shaped from the scanned sketch. I always set my scan on its own layer and LOCK the layer so it wont accidentally get moved. I have accidentally moved a scan before and continued drawing with old layers turned off and didn’t realize the new lines were shifted until sometime later, it was a bit of a pain to get them re-registered. All subsequent illustrator work will take place on new layers sitting above the scan layer. Its a pain but if you are going to work on a file for a while of set it down and come back to it, naming layers is super helpful to help keep track of what is where.

STEP #2:

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Start to block out the basic shapes. I used the pen tool for this. I am not a fan of the pencil to when it comes to drawing these kinds of precise lines and curves . The pen tool also allows for better control of the number and positioning of anchor points. When drawing with teh pen tol i always turn the fill off and set the stroke to an arbitrary color the will not be confused with the scan I’m tracing.

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If youre the kind of person who draws over-lapping letters with out thinking about what goes on behind the over-lap, now is the time to consider it. Closing your eyes only blocks your view of the world it doesnt make it go away; the same goes for the parts of letters that are behind the over-lap. This method of working in illustrator will allow me to combine all these simple looking shapes into much more sophisticated and complex shapes, that would be the wrong use of energy to simply draw out with the pen tool. Once all the shapes are blocked in you can then playing around with the bits, and where and how they sit in relation to each other; something that becomes Sisyphean if done on paper.

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I have purposely left out the negative spaces of the letter, they will be added later when the shaped are combined. Also the Arrows will be created separately and then copied and added to each branch.

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All the basic shapes are drawn. I set the fill back to the default white and black so i can see the solid shapes and begin any initial adjustments to where the basic shapes will sit.

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Next post:

pathFinder Palette and using it to manipulate the simple shapes and turn them into  shapes that more resemble the finished letters of the sketch.