Thursday, November 26, 2020

Monday, November 16, 2020

Postless

 Gee looking at the number of posts this year versus all other years is scary- about 15 so far and the worst other year was around 50/60 posts.
Sort of statistical indicator thats somethings up.

main problem is I'd been working on those Wolfgirl books- and I don't have the rights.
So I'd done a lot of work and roughs /WIP
but can't show it/ haven't shown it the way I usually would.

Also years past there was a flow of life drawings- but the covid thing stopped that - am about to try and join some other groups-


the one at Dust Temple is a bit popular now - you have to book and its booked weeks in advance
(and I'm afraid I'm probably not hip enough to be around all the beautiful young influencer types there now).

Possibly a disappointment only to the bots and spiders that spam my pages with fake visits to my posts.

Why then oh Lachlan do you not use instagram or facebook to post your art.
Well facebook a little- but only to my friends,
but instagram I started ..but then the whole attitude to nudity on facebook and instagram is a problem-
as they are one and the same
ie I used to do a bit of life drawing so I'd have nudes to show...
and frankly I don't want facebook idiots deciding what is acceptable art wise.

Anyway- lets see if I can't post a drawing a day and get some acceptable yearly level of posts happening.

Wolfgirl 4


 Another in the series- illos by me.

A bit dark again- but in the story a lot of stuff happens at night or by day in dark rooms
hard to avoid....oh well the next one will be lighter.
I think also on a shade scale of 1 to 10 it prints at least 2 darker than what it was- so I'll try to get it right this time on the book I'm working on.
3rd time lucky as they say.

*edit* actually had another look in daylight and the darkness wasn't so bad....
hmmm,
ah well next one is lighter location wise anyway

Also a few image positioning head shakers- mainly because I went to a huge amount of effort to make the final images so they'd fit exactly the way/in the spacing of the layout of the roughs I got back only to find they'd been changed and shifted in the final book.
At least though the line thickness was fairly consistent this time- I think in all previous books some illos that were meant to be spreads became half pagers and some half pagers made spreads, whereas at least this time the rescaling after the fact wasn't so great.

I think in my younger years I would have gone to great trouble to imitate Jeremy Leys style, however in my old age I tried to get the characters right in my style- or at least pick a version that Jeremy did of the characters and try to do that do close to that...I say that because over the process of learning to draw the characters- and this goes for Jeremys illo theres a bit of shifting and variation goes on- sort of chinese whispers as you draw them without a model sheet done.
Actually I probably need to do a model sheet for my own sake, was sort of surprised one didn't exist...but anyway....
Jeremys illos were very actiony and fish eye lense/exaggerated perspective- which I understand why
but more stylised and cartoony
whereas mine are a bit more 'realistic' I guess (esp in terms of the dogs leg anatomy for example)
But probably too much so (realistic)- too much detail - I guess because if it were a book I'd buy I love poring over the illustrations
but in such a small page space it seems you can only have 3 real hero elements/foreground characters for readability
- but thats a problem when its a gang of 6.
- maybe I'll dial that back a bit
and try to keep an eye on the readability

expressions are good though- its been a couple of months since I'd finished it so looking at it just now I surprised myself by laughing at some of the expressions I'd given the dogs.
so I guess that's good



Wolf Girl 3


 A book I did the illustrations for.
Well all except 1 and that was a surprise to me . If you have the book its prettty easy to pick which one.

Unfortunately also a bunch came out too dark-
I did ask the publisher when I looked at the difference between the pdfs and the printed version of the first 2 books illustrated by Jeremy Ley whether I ought to adjust my drawings lighter and they said naah don't worry. Also a few got messed with after submitting esp placement wise- ie mainly scaling and positioning such that things that weren't going to be in the gutter were now in the gutter (book page gutter).
I think I did the  character expression and emotion well though.