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.”
Silly wizards.
Was doing some 1-minute sketches from random prompts, when this stupid gag came out of nowhere.
Left: Original drawing in Procreate | Right: Coloring an old linocut test print via tracing 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.
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.
Some kind of fish costume for jumping off things.
Managed to fill the entire A4 sheet, in the end.
Some pencils, for scale.
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.
30-second, 1-minute and 5-minute studies from reference images. (Montage)
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.
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.