there's something that blogging will never be able to touch when compared to the experience of putting pen to paper and having limitless freedom of expression.  i've started to reconnect to that experience that we have from a very early age - when we start colouring in colouring books, start doodling on scraps of paper, distractedly scribbling in the margins of your schoolbooks or during a conference call.  it's like having the chance to speak again after a too-long held vow of silence.

- g

song of the day for loving freedom of expression: now this is fun, depeche mode.

i remember seeing star wars for the first time when i was 7 years old in a theatre in chicago.  it was a cold and windy spring day and i have no idea how i ended up there... i was only 7 years old after all and thirty-one years after the fact, i can hardly be blamed for lacking crystal-clear recollection of the day.  i remember the whole experience being very very surreal, because i had not really grasped much with regard to entertainment beyond superman and the occasional cartoon that involved superman.  but star wars was an immediate influence and i fell in love with it.  hard. i would sketch x-wings and tie-fighters and darth vader masks all over the place.  as i grew from a child into a teen, star wars grew as well.  it became more complex and more sophisticated.  but one of my favourite moments in all of cinematic history, even as an elderly man, remains the moment when luke skywalker, learning that intended future on the barren planet of tatooine is never to achieve anything or have any adventure at all, walks out to the desert prairie and stares out into the future, into the horizon.  the music, the moment, the expression on his face - all still make every fibre of my body want to burst out of my skin and soar off into the sky... there's never been anything like it in my entire life's experience.  i love that moment more than any other moment in any other film ever.  truly.

- g

song of the day for thinking of being far far away:  binary sunset (luke's theme): john williams and the london symphony orchestra

day after day, people ask me, "hey, you're a successful internet architect-type of guy - what do YOU do to relax and unwind after wrangling the wills of men and computers alike day after day, making the world safe from unhandled exceptions and enabling business processes and celebrity gossip via the internet?" well, let me tell you, i like to sit down with a tall glass of water and draw skinny blonde california chicks who sing and strut!!! ok. not really. but these girls, corporate-pop-constructs though they may be, have the rock-star flair down pat. this sketch is TERRIBLE (i think aly or aj (i'm not sure who is who) looks a tad constipated - but that could be ROCK AND ROLL FEVER), but it was fun to get caught up in their thrill and energy and try and get it down in larger-than-life HB. i'm still trying to get caught up on all the art projects that i want to do, but it's hard with all of the real life that i've got to deal with as well. i'm aiming for 52 sketches in my sketchbook category by the end of the year... let's see if i have better luck with that than with the 52 adventures in 2007.

- g

encouraged by last night’s sketch of supergirl, i thought i might try something a little more ambitious today. i remember the first time i saw a drawing by adam hughes – it was a colour illustration of lara croft, the tomb raider, big boots and all, for playstation magazine – i think this was in 1997 or 1998.  it was spectacular.  since then, he’s done a lot of the covers for the tomb raider comic book, and the popularity of this drawing was a big part of his return to mainstream comic work.

so for my next rip-off/technical exercise, i spent a couple of hours drawing lara in her underwater gear.  i used the toothy bristol board that i bought yesterday, rather than my crappy sketch pad paper, just so that i could feel like it was something special.  the thicker paper was very responsive and the extra density of the paper was great to work with.  i went back to a harder pencil to lay out the rough work, still using the eraser a lot more than i would have if left to my own devices, and the smooshy soft pencil to build drama.

i think that i’m getting the hang of how he constructs his proportions and perspective, and shortly, i think i’ll be ready to venture on to my own compositions.  in the meantime, i’m just having a great time just indulging in this adolescent material. 

this sketch took a couple of hours and turned out rather well, and left me wishing that i had a wacom tablet so that i could work up the sketch in photoshop and give it some colour.  i have a lot of fear and dread of working up a piece with my traditional colouring tools (even though they cost me hundreds of dollars and are top of the line and should let me do anything i need).  i worry that my out of shape technique and sensitivity will totally ruin a decent piece that could stand alone as a sketch.  working digitally, you are far less fettered  due to being able to UNDO mistakes, work in layers, and save versions to which you can roll back.  but on the other hand, $500 for a tablet is a bitter pill to swallow when really it’s just a luxurious convenience.

maybe if i get a tax-refund this year – i’ll treat myself to the tablet.  in the meantime, i’ll just try and learn to walk before i try and run – illustration-wise that is.

- g

song of the day for continuing to climb on the shoulders of others:  elevation: u2

i’ve always liked to draw – since i was a very small boy.  but even though i developed a pretty handy knack for it over the years, recently, my skills have fallen into disuse and i’ve often wondered whether i’m any damn good at it at all anymore.  last year i made it a new years resolution to do more artwork, but that was an abysmal failure, as i only managed to do two drawings, one of which i was pretty ashamed of for its highly personal nature, and the other, i’m still working on.

so this morning, when my cats got me up super early for a saturday (8:30am), i turned to my computer and stumbled upon some youtube videos of one of my favourite illustrators, adam hughes, demonstrating his sketching technique.  and i got all fired up!!

hughes is probably best described as a pin-up artist – a guy who principally does comic book covers or posters or one-offs – and his subject matter is almost exclusively sexy young women with gorgeous, gravity-defying, back-breaking breasts.  i love his work (partly for its subject matter but) mostly because he has a dramatic use of line, an unerring sense of proportion (breasts excluded) and perspective, and his  exceptional use of foreshortening and composition.  the subtlety he places in his subjects’ expressions and situations are brilliant.  and he even did an excellent print for the local comic joint, the silver snail, which is hanging two feet from my face right now. 

i went out this afternoon (before my miserable stop-and-go 10k run – still, 10k is 10k) to get some bristol board, new leads for my pencil, some new inking pens, charged up with the inspiration of “doing it like hughes”.  after luring my cats out of my office/bedroom with squishy cat food, i set to work.

i decided to rip off his sketch of supergirl, the one he demonstrates in his youtube video.  i did this for a couple of reasons: kryptonians appeal to me more than just about anything except for cats, and i figured that it wouldn’t be cheating quite so badly if i did a sketch from a super-pixilated video than from a static drawing.  of course, it would have been better still to pull an image out of my head the way he does – but that will come with time and practice.

the part of hughes’s technique that i find most valuable is his acceptance of erasure.  i’ve always worked with very thin and hard leads, taking a very surgical, draftsman’s approach to drawing.  i like to precisely lay down each line and be sure that it’s right before moving on to the next one.  hughes (and probably every other illustrator ever) takes a more holistic approach – building his composition up from general shapes, constructing them loosely and quickly, and ERASING them so that they can be modified, improved and enhanced or reconstructed.  this will be a hard lesson for me to (re-)learn (for i’ve learned this approach many times before), but i think that it will be good for me.  also, my drawings tend to be very flat and straight-on, so i will be trying harder to create more dynamic and engaging compositions as i practice.

i don’t really have much spare time these days, but this sketch took me about an hour.  i think that if i can spare a few hours a week, that would be hundreds of sketches this year and maybe a few finished pieces – that should put me back where i want to be with respect to my illustration skills.  i don’t want to do anything professionally with them, but they sure are fun to have.

- g

song of the day for reinvigorating the artist within: superheroes, daft punk