IF: Yesterday

"Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it."

      

Groucho Marx

IF: Talent

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious" Albert Einstein

I messed up this drawing and am now sad and frustrated. You can see about half the image is more solid, dense and blurred than the other. That's because I drew a lot of it, accidentally, on the wrong layer. I made a rough white and grey image first to scribble over, and inadvertently switched to this layer halfway through. By the time I realised, I had about two hours' worth of drawing which I'd have had to scrap, if I had done what I should have done, which is to start over.
No way, Jose!
So I ported it across from one layer to the other, but that entire block was opaque due to the background. Bottoms.
So, this would have been a bit nicer of an image had I been either a) less careless or b) less lazy.
But I'm not!

Illustration Friday: Jump

The question which would win in a fight between a crocodile and a shark has recently been much contested.

Assuming the crocodile has had ample basking time and they are a size-for-size match, I'm backing the croc. Though I don't know how they fare in open water.

Sharks are still cooler, though.

I didn't draw this for IF originally, but for a friend with whom sharks have been much discussed, and which recently have featured the shark/croc dilemma. 

It just so happens that the topic 'Jump' rather fits the bill as well.

But is it really jumping if a creature has no legs?

Illustration Friday: Swamp

What are the three hazards of the Fire Swamp?
Fire Spurts, Lightning Sand and the ROUS's.

Illustration Friday: Shades

"We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark.....and we're wearing sunglasses."

This week's IF topic: Shades.
It pretty much had to be this or Terminator.
Jake and Elwood won the toss.

Illustration Friday: Fluid

"I can no longer sit back and allow......the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Wow..... it really has been some time since I posted or in fact did any drawing at all.
My last post was just after losing my last job, and with being unemployed, looking for work, and starting a new job its kind of taken me a while to get back on the wagon. The Drawing Wagon.

This week's IF topic is 'fluid', and whilst I scratched my bonce trying to come up with an idea, I kept thinking of Dr. Strangelove and Brigadier General Ripper's obsession with body fluids. So I drew him with Captain Mandrake. The scenes with the two of them are my favourite parts of the film.

Illustration Friday: Asleep

"Shhh! The Birds Are Sleeping...."

is the name of this week's pic.

Most of the time, I'm very anal and perfectionist about drawing. I always want everything to be just so and will spend hours labouring over every inch or pixel. And then almost always dislike the outcome, because of working so hard and ending up with something other than what I envisaged.

So, this week was an exercise in freedom and simplicity. I came up with a concept which I could draw without worrying with the usual (Is the perspective correct? Does that look like a hand? Does it need shadows? and so on and so on). I wanted something quick, clean and simple.

Well.... turns out, over four hours later, it wasn't as quick and simple as I'd wanted!
I got enormously involved with smoothing out lines, and redrawing shapes so they were a little bit nicer than before, even though I told myself there would be no re-drawing.

When you are a child, you draw something and you know what it is. If you watch a small child draw, they are often so decisive and know exactly which scribble needs to go where. Its a wonderful method. And, whilst I'm not attempting to emulate a child's drawing (because its not possible), I wanted to try and recapture some of that feeling. I took a cue from the way children focus on details rather than overall form or shape - so a bird will have a beak and wings, but might well not be bird-shaped, or have any other features.

I think its easy to see which ones I drew first, and which ones were the later creations, more free and loose.