I've been trying to do some drawings for 'Asterion' while keeping it playful -- this is kind of the point, right? To mess around with it and then post here. But I usually end up building up every simple project into a bloated, massive, Tolkienian epic, and 'Asterion' is becoming no different in my mind -- I'm starting to think this could be a trilogy. The only thing keeping it from spinning out of control is that I'm actually letting this idea out onto paper, and that is helping immensely.
Also, while I was about to suffer a boring night at work with what would inevitably become a dead phone had I used it in any boredom staving manner (as I normally do while I'm there), I had to ask myself what I would have been doing had I not had a technological distraction. The answer, of course, was that I'd be drawing. So, I took the time to scratch out some sketches in ball point pen -- my preferred medium for most of my life. Just some gestural little jots, and ideas for symbols or repeating patterns that I could include as visual cues and filler for 'Asterion.' It was nice -- it was a reminder of what I used to do before phones, and before internet. A reminder of things I could still do, if only I would just put my phone away, or spent less time on the web.
When I got home, I cracked the ol' sketchbook open (the one with NICE paper, of which I've had a paralyzing fear of drawing on all my life because it was so expensive and, well, nice). The result was a kind of cool drawing, but one that suffered from my use of both India ink and ball point pen. I love the way ball point has a kind of pencilly looking quality. I love the penstrokes. But next to India ink, it clearly isn't a true black; the coppery glimmer was all wrong when mashed up against a real good solid field of black.
But it was enough momentum to keep me drawing, so the next day I decided to bang out a better pencil sketch of the first page of 'Asterion'. I thought it came out pretty well. I am pleased with the attempt at using the Golden Rectangle as panelling, and I like the way the arcs and lines of the panel drawings implicitly and explicitly mimic the Golden Spiral, winding into infinity.
Not satisfied with that achievement for the day, I wanted to make a blog post, too. I thought this first page sketch was something to write home about, and wanted to share the ball point pen sketches I'd done too.
I'd always marveled at the glimpses offered into a professional artist's sketchbook; so clean, tight, tidy. Immaculate, and full of perfect first draft design sense. Not me. My books are a mess. Big cranky strokes of scribbled ink across a figure's face. Sketches so loose as to be barely even representative of anything. Overworked renderings of body parts attached to hollow, neglected figures. It's disappointing. I figured these blokes must cheat -- they must have someone cleaning up their "sketches" and "thumbnails." Or, at the very least, editing the duds out of the picture. Even if they don't, I console myself with this thought. Happening to have access to Photoshop, I figured I'd try this method out for myself, so as to post more impressive sketches, without the blight of my artistic blunders on display.
I got lost, re-learning Photoshop techniques I'd long forgotten, and manipulating my very simple, unfinished sketches into moody, brooding images that, with a little more work, wouldn't look entirely out of place in, say, a panel of a finished page of a comic book I was working on.
I've always been hesitant about relying on technology, especially when it came to drawing. But the quality of these images, developed from some amateur fooling around with photos taken off of a cell phone, makes me second guess my hesitation. I love drawing, and I want to get good at it and be better at it, and I don't want to be a lazy artist. Yet when it comes to not just getting something done in a certain way, but actually getting something done, Photoshop seems to come in handy. I can use help in the getting something done department, and that's what this 'Asterion' project is about: doing something, first of all, as well as developing my own style. That means no rules, and no self-judgement about what I have to do to get to a final 'product'. Opening avenues of medium and technique, so I can find a method that is mine.
So, in a way, this story, which I guess is about the perils of technology, has come full circle, and its point is this: I should be utilizing technology as a tool, and not letting it turn me into one.
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| Page 1 layout sketch for 'House of Asterion'. The panelling is modeled on the Golden Rectangle. |
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| Detail of the first panel. The figure is Asterion, with his head out of frame. I am trying not to reveal that Asterion is the Minotaur too early on. It is a challenge. |
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| Panel 2. This is Asterion, sitting cross legged. The final image for Panel 2 will have his face scribbled out in a 'V' shape, or the shape of a three pointed star. |
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| Panels 3 (Vitruvian man), 4 (bull's head), 5 (abstract sun), 6 (crescent moon), and 7 (star). |
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| "Bucranium" sketch, ball point and ink. The Bull-head I think will end up looking more mask-like than a living bull's head -- I like the idea of being able to incorporate skull like qualities, decomposing flesh, fur, and bits of wood, stone, or shell applied to the head. |
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| A ball point pen version of Asterion with an abstract "three pointed star" head, and the symbol for Taurus as a corona. |
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| an aurora of geometric patterns; this is just a quick doodle to get an idea of what shapes and patterns might be useful for working into backgrounds, or decorating borders. |
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| Got a little carried away with cleaning up the Bucranium sketch in Photoshop... |
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| My favorite. Retains the sketchy ball point qualities underneath a layer containing the same lines manipulated to be grainy, heavy, dark. Sandwiched together, they look good to me. |
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