Gesture Line

Time for basics. The year started with “Gesture Line” as a topic in the Tuesday Sketch. The experience turned out to be a mini experiment. Adventures looking for a gesture line.

I thought I had gesture lines down. Mine were recognizable as such by my peers, a long time ago! The hare took a nap, eh? I give you a bit of my search for the elusive gesture line. Should be the first thing you see, right?

So I picked a reference image of a lady in a courtsey pose. I suppose I could have picked a pose with more obvious gesture lines, but here we go. If you’re wondering, its from Stephen Silver’s Pose Book app.

Some initial unfocused attempts at finding a gesture line.  I used a Tombow brush pen to throw myself off. Finding more shapes than lines, eh? Focusing.

Some of these lines could be mistaken for gesture lines. Loosen up, and the lines start to make sense. Going for “flow” or visual “action”. The pose was strange, so I came up with a few lines that I think can hold it up.

And here they are. For some reason the shoulders seemed like a good starting point. And of course, the crown of the head starts one main line. The crossed legs complicated things, making this an awkward balance for the figure. I think this is how it goes to the Tuesday Sketch… very very rough. I’ll finish something off of these lines soon.

My lesson: Practice your basics frequently. Better to be in shape when you need it.

Have a great art time, and thanks for dropping by!

Trail – Underground Stream

My largest digital piece as a submission to Illustration Friday.  The topic: Trail.  It’s an experiment of quantity versus quality.  Here’s the sketch I did a couple of months ago, while spending time with my daughter at the park.  As she played, she pretended that the underside of the tall slides were caves, walking along an imagined path.  I doodled some rocks, and took inspiration from the pretend play.  I finished rendering in pencil at home, and left it untouched for a long while.  Illustration Friday’s topic reminded me of the girl walking the underground trail.

This digitally drawn and colored piece took a relative long time.  I’ve seen so many great looking digital paintings, so full of details, that I had to try for that scale.  Quick and simple pieces have been fun to do for IF, but I have plans for more ambitious projects, and this was great exercise, as it let me explore process in a larger scale.  It turns out, I was always fighting between concentrating on quality, versus the quantity of the elements.  I could spend so much time on just coloring a rock, that I decided to forget quality in order to complete the “assignment”.  It did give me an opportunity to mold a process, so to speak.  I approached it in stages.  First I scanned the pencils, and inked digitally, adding a larger area to the left of the stream.  I changed the “quartz” attempt in the sketch to stalactites.  Then I proceeded to color.  I didn’t use much of that selection and fill strategy I see most people use, so the flats were done with big brushes, for most of the work.  Then I went at it with the spray paint tool, varying in opacity, and using layers for line work and colors.  I would say that maybe 70% of the work was coloring and details. Now I see that it needed more planning time. The stream itself got attention at the last moment, when I noticed it was throwing off perspective. First time I try a stream, even at an angle.  Tried to fix it giving it a kind of a waterfall angle, but forgot to suggest it better with the rock walls around it.

Oh well… it was really an experiment, which I really enjoyed. My next digital piece won’t be as ambitious, as I will strive for a better balance between quantity and quality.

Main goal? Visualization and fun. I wouldn’t hang it on a wall, but its a landmark for me (pardon the pun).  Thanks for visiting, and have a great art time! I did!

Welcome to my laboratory!

Cheered on by my friends, I humbly start this blog. Thanks folks! A toast to you!

Do you remember the last movie version of  ”The Fly”?  The main character expressed he didn’t know how it all worked, he just put different systems together to get what he wanted.  I may do that with art tools, styles, you name it.

This is where I tell you all about me, and how it got here.  Well, I’ll spare you details for now.  Suffice it to say, I recently started to take my drawing a bit more seriously, and I got to the point that my frequent posting on twitter and flickr to show my work kind of screamed for a blog.

I have to thank my all of my art friends for the encouragement.  You guys know who you are, and will get roasted, I mean, mentioned here frequently.   You guys are awesome, thanks for the camaraderie!

I do have to mention my friends, Krishna Sadasivam, of “PC Weenies“, and Thomas James, of the “Escape From Illustration island” podcast/art-community.  They have provided much of the encouragement needed for this to start happening.  Thomas had the dubious honor of being the last trigger I needed to push me over to the blogging-side.

This blog is about experimenting and discovery.  That is my art bug,  as I learn various disciplines and techniques.

Lots of design work is in order (like you couldn’t tell how bare this blog is).  I truly hope you enjoy it as it develops.

If you want to check some of my work, look me up at the following links:

http://www.twitter.com/gonzalexx

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gonzalexx

Looking forward to sharing my art adventures with you, and hopefully entertain at the same time.

Now… where’s that “Blogs for Dummies” book?