A Tide in the Affairs of Men

So this was for a contest at the Cartographer's Guild in which contestants were tasked to come up with any map whatsoever that featured NYC. The top three winners get a prize and the top 45 will go to Soho to be displayed in a digital art show over at the Soho Gallery of Digital Art. Prints will be available, so if anyone feels so inclined... ;)

So yeah, its cool in a sense as I like how the inks worked out with the energy of the splatters and the sketchy contours of the coast. But the areas of burnt like black ink irritate me a bit and I wish I did more to integrate them into the style better. Most of all, I wish I went for warm colors over cool as that would convey the energy of the city much better, but I had this image of the cold New York harbor stuck in my mind. So I went for cool.

Anyway, I can't wait to start my next mapping project for another contest over at the Cartographers Guild, this time the theme is castles. So stay tuned!

Sithy Business

I can not even believe I haven't posted this yet. This is from, maybe, 2009? I think I did it in Exeter where I wasted endless hours drawing on that funny little desk in Clydesdale Rise. So in short, if your confused, the story is about three lords of the Sith (evil doers of the Star Wars universe) who meet in a back alley to discuss the state of the Empire and their next moves. The mysterious stranger is, well, mysterious. I never wrote a sequel to address who he was.

The whole story is lifted from a star wars roleplaying site I used to write on, sw-fans.net, an I had been there for years. I first started writing there when I was 12 when the re-release of Star Wars: A New Hope had dazzled my mind. Previously, I had been heavily involved in the world of Professional Wrestling fiction... I dunno if that would warrant a comic book though ;)

So the work was done on Strathmore Medium drawing paper where it was composed first in pencil, and then finished in ink. I much prefer the final product to be in ink as its permanence transcends that of pencil and I don't have to worry about that messing smudging. I never understood why comic artists never insisted on inking their pencils (though some do). I mean, the final product is printed in ink, not pencil. While the artist may compose the image, the inker makes it real... and that is more than tracing.

Doodles at work

Ah, I am so delinquent in posting on this thing. Drawing time has gone down considerably given my obligations to work, ect. But I manage to get a few doodles in at work...

Mannequin

Lately I've been real bad and haven't been drawing like I ought to be. I'm gonna try to pick it up some more this month and I figured that there was no better way than to finish a previous started drawing. The preliminary for this drawing should be in older posts. Basically, I liked this photo quite a bit, the pose had style and the fashion was interesting and attractive.

What the hell ever happened to women wearing hats? Bring it back!

Anyway, I never finished the hat on this one and I stumbled upon the drawing as I was using my sketchbook to transport legal documents. I thought, the best way to get back on track would be to finish the hat off and get back in the habit. So voila.

I used my sharpie and a gray scale pen I picked up at Pat Catans, plus some old black markers for some of the not quite black areas.

From January

Well I've been keeping up with practice... I just don't generally like what I seem to be producing of late. These few, however, look reasonably alright in my eyes. There's definitely a variance in style which I've been messing around with. I really don't like pencil, but I'm trying to keep up practice with it. Bought a gray marker though, and it's quite fun for adding in a single shade of tone to spice things up.