Escalator Under Repair

It is a tradition to celebrate when a sketchbook is all used up. All the pages have drawings on them! For this sketchbook which I have used since 2009, I started with a drawing done in my local mall, Tysons I. So I finish off with this drawing done in the same mall. An escalator was under repair and they had left it uncovered. The beige covering hiding the industrial mechanisms of moving consumers was gone, revealing the dark machinery within. "Pandora" is a jewelry shop. 

I'll be moving on to another sketchbook. It isn't entirely new, I've sketched in it before and shown the work here, but this one is a Moleskine with yellow paper, and I will be using greyscale markers as well as penwork in it.

Pitt black ink technical pen on sketchbook page, 10" x 7", August 30, 2012. Drawing took about an hour and a half to complete. Click on the pic for a larger view.

Trader Joe's Tuscan Pane

The new managers at my Trader Joe's are replacing faded old decorations and ads with catchy, simple billboards advertising favorite products with cute slogans. I am using bright, comic book style frames with word balloons for these. This one is the first of the series and will go high up on the wall near the ceiling. The picture of "Tuscan Pane" (Tuscan Italian style bread) is a somewhat glamourized portrait of an actual loaf of the bread. 

"Tuscan Pane" is spray paint, acrylic, and acrylic markers on Masonite, 48" x 36", August 2012.

iPad roof edge

I did this sketch on the iPad during my work break. It's about 20 minutes' worth of work. I'm finally getting close to what I want with these images, which is the interaction of building with environment, done in a digital style which resembles a gouache (opaque watercolor) painting. I must admit that some re-working was done in Photoshop before I presented this here. I haven't found the "ruler" in Art Studio which would give me accurate straight line architectural elements. I think it is there though. The texture brushes in Art Studio give me a very nice tree and leaf look.

No one is commenting on my architecture and landscape, maybe I should go back to some figure studies and dragons. There is no rule that I have to make architectural studies on my work break art time, and my neighborhood, frankly, is kind of boring when it comes to environmental elements. Unless you really get into apartment buildings, shopping centers and urban vegetation. I have to remind myself that there is no artistic prohibition on fantasy drawings on either paper or screen. 

Art Studio iPad app, August 28, 2012.

Flaming Ramparts panel geologists

This is a panel from THE FLAMING RAMPARTS, the graphic novel I've been working on for more than ten years off and on. This panel is from about 2003. It shows two of the geologist characters talking about whether the big volcano is about to erupt. Note that one of them is holding an iPad, at least the Noantri-world version of one. This is 7 years before real iPads made their appearance in our world, but tablet computers were already around long before I did this panel. 

This is from page 19, and I'm currently working on page 43. The pages are 11" x 15" which means that I can't fit them on a conventional scanner. I have a hand-held scanner which produced this image but it also doesn't scan enough of the page to be useful and avoid a load of Photoshop image-merging work. I might have to scan these pages one panel at a time! I wish there were a way to just scan each page as a single entity. Photography is not sharp enough. I need to find a way to do the imaging without spending a fortune in fees. I am planning to switch to a digitally colored format after this chapter is done, which will save me a lot of scan work, though the original hand-drawn inking will have to be scanned anyway.

Needless to say, these guys are wrong. They are greatly underestimating the volcano's power, and in later pages, stuff blows up real good. 

Panel from THE FLAMING RAMPARTS is ink and watercolor on Fabriano illustration board, about 3" x 3", sometime in 2003.

Big Mistake in Strasburg

My last stop before returning home was Strasburg, Virginia, a small town at the foot of the northern Blue Ridge. It has plenty of history from the 18th and 19th centuries, but it remains almost as dormant as Lovingston to the south. There are some good 19th century commercial buildings in the downtown area, as well as this one here, from around 1900, which is the "Hotel Strasburg" where I stayed. The hotel is done up in Victorian style and has a fairly good restaurant as well. I stayed there when on my West Virginia tour of 2009. It's real cozy. 

Naturally I wanted to draw its Victorian facade so I sat on my mini stool across the street in front and drew. I managed to get most of the upper story of the hotel drawn before I realized that I had made a big mistake. It was such a big mistake that it caused me to abandon the drawing. Can you spot it? Well, let me show you. There should be two windows with shutters, one on either side of the central upper pediment porch. But I have only allowed room for one, as seen on the left side behind the flag. I ran out of space to draw the window on the other side! I left an indication of half a window on that side, which looks stupid to anyone aware of architectural drawing. Well maybe next time I will take more care on the proportions of my buildings.

Pitt black ink technical pen on sketchbook page, about 6" x 9", August 19th, 2012.

Lovingston buildings

I didn't do just wineries and landscapes when I was on my Virginia jaunt. I did on-site drawings of interesting architecture too. Lovingston, in central-west Virginia, is a small town where you can find 19th century commercial buildings like these in the illustrations. The top one is a private house which is also a law office, with a majestic carved-wood porch. Unfortunately, I made the drawing too small to show the ornament in any detail. The lower drawing is a main street shop front, with a characteristic Southern two-story porch. 

Most of the commercial buildings on the historic Lovingston main street need some attention. No one has renovated them recently and many of the storefronts are empty. If I had heaps of money I'd renovate them and turn Lovingston into a cutesy tourist destination. 

On-site outdoor sketching isn't as pleasant as it is cracked up to be by the purist artists who demand that you must be outdoors looking at the real thing when you draw or paint something. You have to find a place to sit and when you do, it is usually crawling with ants and other annoying insects, which bite exposed parts of you and cling to your clothes. Nevertheless I followed the Artistic Specifications to do these and I am still scratching some of the insect bites.

Black Pitt technical pen on sketchbook paper, about 6" x 9", August 16, 2012.

Shenandoah Vineyards

The last winery I visited on this August journey was Shenandoah Vineyards, situated in the irresistibly picturesque Shenandoah Valley. That day was a rainy day and clouds obscured the tops of the hills. I did my usual tasting and sipping and sat out on their vine-draped upper porch to do this panoramic view. Colored pencils can be used almost like paint, since their leads are made out of wax which can be blended in layers on the paper surface. As always, I tried to make the most accurate color matching with my pencils, including the brownish areas of trees which had been troubled by excessive heat. The grape-laden vines were a vivid yellow-green that seemed brighter even than my pencils could portray. By the time I finished this drawing, the clouds had lifted from the mountains and the sunlight was returning.

Here's a picture of my drawing set-up at Shenandoah. You can see the unfinished drawing in my sketchbook, as well as the brown Pitt technical pen and my colored pencils in their elastic loop-secured cases. The wine in the glass is Shenandoah's "Fiesta," a sweet red blend that includes Concord grapes. It's delicious and I brought home a bottle. 

Click on the drawing to see a larger view. Sip Fiesta wine when appropriate.