Finish for Free-For-All

Free-For-All: Second Ruff

Now that I’ve gained some space between the characters, I’m better able to specifically designate what each of them is doing in the composition. The white spaces between the characters will add an airyness and flow that would have otherwise been bogged down and confused their actions.
More importantly, I have the option of making their heads as large as possible — as this is where I’ll spend the majority of my efforts.

So I better get crackin’.

Free-For-All: First Rough

At first glance, this is an extremely confusing rough, but it also includes my adjustments with not too much erasing of the elements I decided against.
At the top of the sketch you can see I scrawled “undertaker,” “katie” and “kenny.” Under each I wrote down a short list of items each is to use as a weapon. Undertaker gets a chair (of course,) Katie can wield a deadly cooking utensil (like a ladle — cause a knife is too violent and too obvious.) As I researched Kenny Chesney, I found out he had injured his foot in a stage accident at the beginning of the tour, so I’m putting a cast on him and letting him swing his guitar.
Now, in this compact composition, I’ll need to gain a little breathing room, as I want these character’s faces to be the main attraction. Note that I’ve included in the image, gray arrows that show where I want each combatant to move — away from center. I’ll work this til I’m satisfied the composition can work visually and it’s logical to the action. Then I’ll do a tighter rough, fleshing out the particulars and post it Wednesday.

Enjoy this now and hear me later!

So Much To Do

In this week’s Entertainment Tri-State, Mr Lavender is serving up a whole lotta good stuff to do this weekend, from local cuisine queen Katie Lee Joel’s appearance at Border’s Bookstore, to a Kenny Chesney/LeAnn Rimes concert in Charleston. Don’t forget about the Saturday morning Marshall graduation followed by a WWE smackdown at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena featuring the Undertaker (among others.)

With so much going on, I’ll compose one of my favored “free-for-all” fight scenes with three of the featured participants.

First of all, I’ll get the Undertaker, (cause, you know — that’s what he does); and I’ll pit him against Katie Lee Joel wielding a soup ladle. Then I’ll drop Kenny Chesney into the mix. I may place a Camden Park rollercoaster as a backdrop, cause there will be a special Mother’s Day discount at the gate.

While I'm gathering my research and visual reference, you might want to limber up before the weekend.

FInish for Derby Day Parties

Happy May Day folks. These derby horses came together fairly easy and the incorporation of the racing colors really made the image pop more.
I was able to spend a little extra time to make sure the grill surface (with unidentified food) and the color of the wine inside the bottle looked right. Earlier on in the process, I decided not to worry about the horses lack of ability without opposable thumbs -- just float the wine glass and the BBQ skewer -- that justified my inclusion of the oven mitt.
Enjoy!

Derby parties coming

This week’s Entertainment Tri-State cover is a quickie drawing on the upcoming derby parties around the area this Saturday.
The initial idea was to have a horse and rider, but with the horse rearing up with a glass of wine in its hooves.
However, I wanted to convey the idea of a party with grilling out and several horses around. So I came up with the first rough.
I also briefly came up with the notion of including a television (for them to watch the festivities) but after sketching it out, I realized its inclusion would make the composition feel clunky.

Now in the second rough, I’ve moved the wine horses to the foreground and placed the grilling horse (sounds weird doesn’t it?) further back. This gives the composition more visual depth. Since it is a quickie, I’m going to try to minimize the number of detail horses — those horses that I want more attention drawn to. I may end up doing a grayish background mass — which is a way to wash in the illusion of a crowd of horses without investing a lot of detail and time.

Here’s just a quick mention. As I started to draw my horse heads, I didn’t like that they were coming off “mule-ish.” These thoroughbreds are an elite group and needed to exude that sort of dignity and aire. Check out my before and after.

I also think it worth mentioning that in drawing horses, it can be challenging to get the body structure right, otherwise your horse can come off looking like a big dog. That will be a challenge as I create horses that can cook on a grill and pour wine into serving glasses.

More to come later … but not too much later.

Finish on Appalachian Film Festival

Submit your art to The Drawing Board blog

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Submit anything you'd like feedback on with a little verbiage to our news illustrator Thom Marsh at tmarsh@herald-dispatch.com.
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Appalachian Film Fest: Second Rough

Here’s a better flushed out version of the previous rough that I’ll likely use for the finish. I made the ball cap change I mentioned earlier and, in the same vein, updated the megaphone, to a bullhorn. Adding the hillside helped a lot as well.
The part that is crucial, though I’m not going to enjoy as much, is doing the tedious sprocket holes on the rolling film — making sure they line up across from each other and have the proper curvature, and a reasonable thickness (so they look like actual holes with film-edge depth, and not like square shapes on the film’s surface. I won’t deal with putting actual images on each film frame — I may lose my mind …
One other thing I changed was after I did the single film strip, I realized it look a lot like a rollercoaster track, so despite the additional tedium, I’ll place a few more partial film strips to create a “cascading like water” look. Also, to this end, I raised the raft and all above the “water” to give it more action.
More later.

Appalachian Film festival rolling in

Dave Lavender is doing a preview for the upcoming Appalachian Film Festival and suggested the idea of a whitewater stream of film coming out of the mountains. I thought it a good idea but wanted to put someone in a raft coming down the film rapids.
A caricature of someone wouldn’t work, cause the person would need to be widely recognized by our readership. So I decided to go with a “generic” film director-type guy, with a megaphone, ball cap and heavy-soled workboots. Note in the rough that I put one of those, artsy beret-type hats on him (I don’t know if its an actual beret) but after having done it, think the director’s ball cap smashed down on his head with oversize sunglasses would work better. I’ll need to leave enough room to fit a camera as well.
Here’s a quick rough, where I’ll obviously need to go in and put the mountains around, so he won’t look like he’s riding a rollercoaster.
I’ll also need to be mindful of where to put the obligatory headline and copy.

More to come soon.

Finish on David Allan Coe

David Allan Coe, from what photos I found of him, has a very diverse look, which despite the diversity, is consistently textural. What I mean is, he has a lot of things going on from the beads woven into his long scraggly beard to the multiple tattoos up and down his arms. These tattoos, I chose to omit for the most part, aside from a few quick doodley scrawls. With his signature rebel guitar, the basketball and the Easter basket, there needed to be somewhere for your eye to take a rest.

David Allan Coe catching all for Spring

This week’s Entertainment cover story is a hodge-podge of Springtime events, with a headliner of singing country outlaw David Allan Coe. Add to this the last opportunity for skiing, March Madness and Easter events, staff writer Dave Lavender gave me the idea of putting David Allan on skis with a basketball and Easter basket. With not a lot of time to work with, it sounded good to me.

I don’t remember ever seeing a picture of David Allen Coe (until recently), but his classic song “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” was a party anthem of ours at Eastern Kentucky U. Oh, the late night choruses we enjoyed!
Anyway, here’s a straight-up ruff of Dave’s suggested idea.

More to come…

MercyMe finish

Hey folks,

Computer problems resolved.

Enjoy!

MercyMe in progress

Here’s a quick rough showing where I’ll generally place the band members — obviously making front man Bart Millard the largest guy. As usual, I place the heads first and let the rest of their bodies and instruments flow around as secondary importance. I’ll not be too concerned with these things being in correct perspective. Their use, other than the obligatory, is to enhance the overall flow around the image.
More later …

MercyMe sort of like Aerosmith … uhh, let me explain

Hey folks, Good news! The outstanding band MercyMe is coming to Huntington, meaning there’s an opportunity have some fun in caricature. As I’ve posted before a little seminar on the process (see my Jan 17—18 postings) where I used the band Aerosmith as my example. I’ve been a fan of MercyMe for a while now and although they don’t look anything like Aerosmith, their faces are dynamic and interesting enough to put together a fun illustration. Check out the photo of the band. Compared each face to the next one and note what about each face makes it different from the next — head shape, eyebrows, nose size, etc. The most even-featured is, perhaps, guitarist Mike Scheuchzer (far left). Also, in regards to Barry (shaved head) it’s not good in an illustration like this to just draw a hairless guy and have it assumed to be Barry. The challenge is to make him recognizable as Barry, even with hair — or better, a hat.
But the main problem with doing a caricature of a band with this many members (6) is trying to give each face equal size and space. In the Aerosmith, it was less problematic because the composition with the five members is less blocky.
Check out the caricature I did some time back of Diamond Rio who have equal members (6). While still rendering the bodys as secondary to the heads, I staggered them to give a more interesting composition. However, this time with MercyMe, I’m going to try to make the overall composition within the image flow even better by varying the head sizes a little.
More on this later.