IN PRAISE OF THE MIGHTY BRUSH PEN

It is well known in my circle of friends and family that I am a sketch-a-holic, and cannot and will not go anywhere without something to draw with or on, and when I don't I will draw on anything I can find when I start  twitching and jonesing for a quick doodle. The other day my wife and I were out and about running errands and taking care of some business things together, and honestly in some cases I would prefer to wait in the hall or waiting areas rather than go in, she would do likewise, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

I have a really cool bag of stuff  that I carry for extended trips and a commando kit for other times, and most  always something or other.

As I stated above...........I come prepared for these moments of solitude and waiting by bringing things with me to occupy my time........I.E. .... a sketchbook, and a few choice tools of the trade.

In the above picture is an HB pencil, a mechanical pencil ( also HB ) an erasure pen thing and on the left is the Mighty Brush pen!!.

This wonderful but awkward looking thing is a brush pen, the bulbous part on the back is a big 'ol reservoir and can hold any liquid you want. I have mine filled with black ink ... although I did water mine down a little so I can have some greys .... and get black if I go over the areas again. The tip is a really cool fiber that retains a sharp tip for fine lines and will spread out just like a brush to get broad strokes as you need.

This little fellow has become a major part of my sketching and doodling arsenal. He is honestly at this point invaluable, for as I sketch out things I will go back and use him to darken and delineate various sketches that might actually develop into something more  as you will see below.

These little guys were done on the outing with my wife while I waited around at one point, and will eventually be an ink drawing that has to come out soon. As you see some have been highlighted with the brush pen, mainly to define the lights and darks. Spotting my blacks this way ultimately helps me to find the form and basic shapes I am looking for. The rest will follow as I refine the image, but doing things in this way will give ;me a very quick idea of where I really want to go.

With my brush pen, I can do it on the go, and not wait until I get back into the studio and get out my ink and brushes, a very handy tool. if you don't have one, I would strongly suggest you look into getting one.

I usually buy mine at CheapJoes.

PEN THING

Ok, I thought I would start off the new year with something old and a sort of tip as well.

I have been doing a lot of ink lately and have been in need of doing some straight lines. This little dooflatchy I have had for EVER!! I don't know how long I have had it or what it is even called.............I call it my line dooflatchy thing............that said, there is an opening at the tip of this thing, a screw to open and close the opening...making it wide or narrow depending on what the desired width of the line you need is.

You put a blob of ink into the gap, adjust the wheel and then lay it up against your ruler and draw your line. No smudges, no muss and a great line. If you can find one or what it is get one, they are darned handy.


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This just in.....I have found out that this little thing here is called a RULING PEN, and that I got it so many moons ago from my biggest supporter and all around cool person.............my MOM!! Thanks : )

HAPPY GNEW YEAR

Happy New Years everybody, I look forward to this coming year with more hope and happiness than the past year, and not as much as the next!! Lots of projects in the works and can't wait to post um here for those of you who come by to see them.

As I have done every year for the past few years.........here is this years Gnew Years Gnome, he is a bit early. I have usually done these on New Years day, but now I can relax and enjoy it more with my family.

Can't wait to see ya'll in 2012

SANTA HEADS SOUTH

I haven't done a " naughty" Santa in a while, and to be quite honest, I hadn't thought about it until one day last week a good friend of mine, who I will not name.............MARY WILMER, brought up the past and told me I should do another Naughty Santa....................well the seed was planted and my mind started working without me and then all of a sudden this sort of popped out.

So there you have it, and MERRY CHRISTMAS, I'll post again at New Years with this years Gnome picture.

May God Bless and keep you always.

END OF THE YEAR CLEAN UP

This rather cluttered picture is of my drawing table,and  although I wish I could claim to be this productive on a daily basis, these scattered images are the culmination of personal projects I have started and had to stop and or start again due in large part to other more pressing matters.

I tend to stop working on commissions during the last part of November and all thru December, the holidays are so close together and family time is in all honesty more important, but during this time I also try to clean up a few things that lay about for the year ( or 2 in the case of the Batman, Green Lantern and hidden Superman inks ).

Along with the 3 new Hippie Chicks I posted this morning..... yeah I know, I will go for a bit with out posting anything then here today are 2 .............. I have completed 3 other inks, and a cartoon for the Naughty Bits collection. I will post the 3rd of the 3 inks tomorrow since my computer is refusing to recognize my scanner today after scanning 6 images earlier, and the ink is a bit large and I do have to paste it together............it is the cavemen drawing in the top right hand side.

CEREMONY

 SHE WOLF

YES!!!   

Well that is all for now, if the computer and scanner make amends, I will get the other one scanned and posted as well as any other things I manage to finish during this time............there are maybe 4 oils I would like to get back to as well.....................

HIPPIE CHICK PIN-UPS

It all started with the song "Downtown", a young lady dressed in the current nuvo-hippy attire, and what is in my opinion not a very nice smelling substance called patchouli. Whether you like the aroma or not................it set my mind running because of the coincidence of time. I have Petula Clark singing a wonderful song. Downtown, and this rather attractive yet foul smelling young woman next to me.

Next thing I knew I did a quick watercolour of ...............

PATCHOULI CLARK

 .... and yes the image is somewhat based on the young nameless woman......

After the incident the names and images started to come to me and I couldn't stop, I started to write them down and do the paintings when I wanted........they were there and it really seemed like the thing to be doing at the time. 

So let me introduce to you a few more of the women that have come to me since the incident:

AMBER WAVES

SUMMER RAYNE

LORA BUSCHE

There are even little histories behind some of the names, like Amber Waves is a mid-Western girl  who loves to walk barefoot in the fields of grass, Ms. Busche is a natural girl who enjoys dancing at parties and enjoys life as it comes...............this is all pretty scary when you think about it, but I have honestly come to terms with these things and accept them as they pop into my head.

I have a file somewhere labeled " NAUGHTY BITS", that has more images that are not as tame as these, and one day I will get around to posting a few of them.

Any how, this is just a wee bit of what goes on in my mind as I relax and let the ideas flow. Most of these come out at night as I sit and watch t.v. before going to bed. I think this is why I don't really dream all that much, or have nightmares.......... I take care of it before hand, and allow myself the opportunity to just sleep.

SNAIL GIRLS

For those of you who are on my Facebook you are or maybe aware of my on going SNAIL GIRLS  drawings, but for those of you not on FB with me or are unaware of the series I am going to recap a little bit. ONe day I sat down with my sketchbook and doodled out a little thing of a faerie riding on the back of a snail sort of like  bull riding at a rodeo, I like it so much that I found a small piece ( scrap ) of paper that I had lying about and quickly did an ink thing of it:

....and here she is, the "first" Snail Girl. I believe I drew her in 2010.

At some point in the past year I was sitting in my living room ( aka Studio B ) and had messed up a drawing that I was working on, and as I sat there tore it up as usual, but then as I was sitting there looking at the torn paper, I drew a girl talking with a snail:

It was a fun thing to do, and I liked the image, for me it was sort of innocent a girl talking with a snail. After I a while I did another and another. All were done on torn sheets of paper of messed up drawings, and as my collection of Snail Girls grew I decided to keep the torn sheets of paper and have them on hand for the purpose of doing Snail Girls, this envelope sits by my chair in Studio B and is there ready and waiting for the next one to appear:

Here is an example of the approximate size of the drawings:

...and a few more closer images of the girls as well as an early family portrait:

As I continue to do these and looking back at them, I realized there is some sort of conversation going on between these two friends, and in realizing this, it became all the more important to me to continue with this until the conversation was over. At first it was for me about getting the body posture right, balancing the blacks and whites to where one did not over power the other, but now it is more about keeping the friends together...........sort of silly I know, but I like it.

I have to mention that all the drawings are done to the shape of the paper and not tearing the paper to fit the drawing, that would be cheating. The shape of the paper helps to determine what is being said in the drawing. The more of these I do, the more intense the conversation becomes in trying to find a posture or pose that I haven't done before..........who likes to repeat themselves in a conversation.

At the top of this I posted the "first" snail girl, well in cleaning out some things and trying to tidy up the place I found this:

This is the actual First of the SNAIL GIRL images, she was done in 2004, six years before the other First. As you see in the first to images the gals have wings and are in a sort of ironic action pose...........bull riding a snail and surfing on a snail, just something that leans towards my sense of humor, but as I went on they changed, no wings and more of an equality between them.

Anyway, this is some of what comes out in the evenings as I kick back and chillax to end my day. In the next few posts, I will be going to put up a few of the pieces that come out as I wind down and relax in the evenings before going to bed............or on the nights that I can't sleep and get up and try to get sleepy.