Images

Spider police

Doodle showing a police spider chasing a criminal spider.

Asked my 4-year-old what to draw. “A spider thief!” she said. “And then the police spider comes in his spider police car!” “But what has the spider thief stolen?” I asked. She got a worried look on her face. “ALL the presents.”





Random prompt: Miniature boxer

Sketch of a man clutching his face in pain, reeling back from a microscope. There is a tiny figure standing in the microscope’s sample dish.

Was doing some 1-minute sketches from random prompts, when this stupid gag came out of nowhere.



Adding a second color to a linocut, part one

Photo of desk, showing two versions of the same print. One digital version on an iPad, and a printed version on paper. There is a tracing paper taped on top of the paper print, used to draw and define fields of color.

Left: Original drawing in Procreate | Right: Coloring an old linocut test print via tracing paper.

Close-up of a drawing on tracing paper. A blurry view of the original image can be seen in through the paper.

Above: Finished color blobs on tracing paper. Going to transfer these to a fresh linoleum sheet to cut a color plate.

Mentioned, in yesterday’s daily doodle post, that I’m going to try my hand at a color lino print. I’ve been wondering how to transfer the digital color layer from Procreate onto a linoleum sheet. For the black print, I smeared a laser print-out with acetone to loosen the toner, and then rubbed it off on the lino. It helped, but the results were unsatisfying: a faint image that I had to draw all over again, by hand.

Didn’t want to do that again, so I’m trying tracing paper instead. Taped some across an old test print, blocked out the colored areas, and ringed them with a pen. In theory, I should be able to flip the paper over and mark the blobs on a lino sheet using a pin, pen or knife. We’ll see how it goes.

The wood filler from yesterday worked beautifully for cutting, by the way. Still anxious to find out how it prints.



Fixing linocut mistakes with wood filler

Using wood filler to patch a linocut.
Close-ups of linocut plate with splotches of wood filler. New details have been drawn onto the hardened filler.

I’m trying to learn the craft of linocut and make it a hobby, but so far (over the last decade) I’ve only made something like 4 prints. Still get into it from time to time! I must have started on this snake print back in 2020, as a learner project. I cut this plate with gusto, having heard one can use wood filler to fix cutting mistakes later. Now I’m going to find out if that’s actually true, and if it is as easy as it sounds. (Is it ever?) To be continued.

The other things to learn are about color printing, but that’s a whole different beast.



Sketchbook page, Jan. 7th

Sketch of a fish costume and a person wearing it while jumping off a diving board

Some kind of fish costume for jumping off things.



Drawings and doodles: Fantasy Map Complete

Drawing of a landscape based on a child’s imagination. It has a racetrack, fire engines, unicorns, pirates, and a giant, robot alligator.

Managed to fill the entire A4 sheet, in the end.

Close up of drawing, next to some pencils. (The details in the drawing are pretty small.)

Some pencils, for scale.

Finished the big doodle map. That was fun!

(Previous updates: part one and part two)



Drawings and doodles: Fantasy Map, Part 2

Colorful pencil drawing of various cretins

Mice and giraffes and a treasure, oh my!

Got a few more minutes down on my daughter’s fantasy map tonight. Love that little fiddle-playing creature, it came out of one of her scribbles.

(Previously | Finished map)



Figure drawing, Jan. 4th

Montage of quick figure sketches

30-second, 1-minute and 5-minute studies from reference images. (Montage)

Figure drawings, sketches with watercolor marker and tech pen.

A couple of longer studies, broke out the watercolor markers. (Montage)

More figure sketches from reference photos. (Found another great source of pics at characterdesigns.com)

Still have very little idea what I’m doing; just drawing off photos feels like learning a new language by parroting the TV or learning to cook something by blindly following a recipe. (Both good first steps, though.) Will have to dive into the anatomy books to get a better feel for the underlying shapes and proportions.



Figure drawing, Jan. 3rd

Figure drawing sketch

Pigma Micron 02 on spiral notebook paper – if I’m ever going to fulfill the other goal of drawing every day, I gotta use whatever’s at hand! Love that pen, though.

Same new year’s resolution every year: gonna up my figure drawing game! Found some of the sketches I copied off of Loomis’ “Figure Drawing...”, those were from 2020. Didn’t draw that much last year, I guess.

Tonight I did a quick sketch of a random image from the SketchDaily Reference Site. Not great, but the point is to return to these after some time and (hopefully) laugh heartily at all the wonky proportions. Exercise baselines and whatnot.

Hoping I’ll find some local life drawing sessions this year.



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