Oh, did you think I'd forgotten about or completely given up on this...?
Yeah, I kind of had. It's been a rough month.
But here it is. Page 33.
I might continue with this.
I might not.
I do have some other artsy plans for the new year...
If you're just joining this Journey, you might want to head on over to Day One and once you've read to the bottom, click on "Newer Post" on the left, just below the comments.
I had the next dozen pages written... then I thought I'd pencil them all in one batch... and I did that, mostly... and then I thought I'd ink and colour a few pages a day and post those... and started doing that... but then started jumping around a lot... and then got sick of it all... and then decided to take a day or two off.... and then got distracted by other things and fell out of the groove.... that day or two turned into a week or two... and then the rest of the month... and now here we are... It's been a struggle to finish these. I'm not sure where I'm going from here.
If you're just joining this Journey, you might want to head on over to Day One and once you've read to the bottom, click on "Newer Post" on the left, just below the comments.
Like I said... I'm not sure where I'm going from here... I have a script for the next dozen pages or so... and a general (but somewhat vague) idea of where it's going after that... but I am SO SICK of drawing it on these tiny 8x8 squares... I may continue... but the format may change. Which causes me some deep pain... the whole point was to pick something and STICK WITH IT!?
On the other hand, the other point of this was just to do a thing and learn from the experience and grow... and if I hate what I'm doing so much that it makes me NOT want to do the thing... maybe it's time ot change it up to something I DO want to continue with...
We shall see...
I had five pages penciled for today, but only managed to get three finished while there was still good light...
(I've just been taking pictures of these... I do have a scanner they'd fit on, but it's about 20 years old and now any time I scan something there's a white line down one side....)
If you're just joining this Journey, you might want to head on over to Day One and once you've read to the bottom, click on "Newer Post" on the left, just below the comments.
I kind of started these yesterday... but didn't finish them up until today...
If you're just joining this Journey, you might want to head on over to Day One and once you've read to the bottom, click on "Newer Post" on the left, just below the comments.
I swear that's the end of the "Introduction"...
Sort of...
I really did just come up with this daft idea on Sunday...
Initially I thought I'd do this just one page at a time...
Right in my sketchbook, starting when I left off at the end of October...
I still really like the idea of having done it in my sketchbook, but I VERY QUICKLY realized there would be certain logistical problems with doing so and had to make adjustments...
Also, after doing this first page, I decided it would probably be a better idea if I actually plotted out - at the very least - the day's pages...
And so I did that in my BIG sketchbook.
And then started doing them on individual pages... which went MUCH quicker...
Starting with Day Two, I began typing the dialogue into the computer, because I had all sorts of ideas, but wasn't initially sure where to put them in the overall dialogue... and once they were in order, I printed it off and tried to figure out page and panel breakdowns from there...
thought the second batch of eight pages were worked out for Day Two, I only got four of them finished.
All of the pages so far.
Day Two, y'all.
(not quite 8 pages)
When you suddenly realize, halfway through inking the first day's pages, that your main characters are subjects of Andy Warhol paintings...
Oh no! What's happened to the Banana and the Can!? Find out tomorrow... or.. maybe later today!?
As hinted at in the previous post... I started a new thing...
I should probably just let the comics tell the story (since so much of these first days is... well.. explaining the whole thing...)
And here we are at Day Thirty-One…
I did drawings ALMOST half the days… almost…
(Actually I DID manage to do some drawing EVERY DAY… I just didn’t do things I felt like sharing every day - a lot were preliminary/practice drawings for the ones that I DID post)
My friend Shawn in Portland organizes this 3-Speed Challenge every October. I mean, it's a whole THING - registration fees, you get an official log book and patches and stickers and stuff... Loots like a lot of fun. I do make a point to ride the Brompton at least once every October (the only bike have with just three speeds), but I just don't ride it enough to participate in the challenge.
I'd originally planned something else for today, but then noticed the Art Placement Challenge prompt was "Automatic" and the Inktober prompt was "Slither" and I immediately thought of a snake on an e-bike... so...
Snake on an E-Bike
Dispensed with worrying about backgrounds today - and probably tomorrow... just to get SOMETHING done!
I've missed a few days...
Like, MORE than a few days...
Trying really hard to stay motivated and not let the ALL OR NOTHING well-I-missed-one-day-so-I-won't-have-completed-the-challenge-so-no-point-in-continuing thinking...
The above illustration is actualy just one in a series of a number of practice pieces for a friend.
These are some of the others.
Not sold on that background. I kind of want to do a more "urban" background... buildings and people... but that feels like it might be a bit busy...
...AND a lot of work!?
The prompt for the Art Placement Drawing challenge was "Messy" and the prompt for Inktober was "Extinct", so....
Wait... Thirteen!? But... it's the 22nd!?
Yeah, I'm backing up a bit and veering away from the critters on bikes theme this morning… the prompt for Day 13 on the Art Placement Drawing Challenge was Fish Club and, having watched a lot of Bojack Horseman lately, THIS is IMMEDIATELY what came to mind and I knew I had to do it… well, I didn’t QUITE get to doing it in time for the 13th… but here it is, a week late… like everything in Saskatchewan these days…
Bikepackers at Sunset.
Really, they should have stopped long before sunset and set up camp... Maybe they're on a epic Enduro race and trying to get just a few more kilometres in before a couple hours of sleep...?
The prompt, for the 18th, (on the Art Placement drawing challenge list) was Contre-Jour.
I'm back!
“My bikes okay… Oh, nah, it’s just a scratch…”
Years ago I worked in a bike store. After a weekend race a young woman brought in her bike to be looked at as she’d had quite the crash. The bike was totally fine. She had road rash all down one side of her body. I jokingly wondered aloud if she’d purposely fallen in such a way as to take the worst of it to protect her bike and, without missing a beat she said: “Skin gowns back, paint jobs don’t… “
I wasn’t trying to draw her or her bike here. (She was a human, for one thing, not a cat!) I just remembered the incident WHILE drawing this!
The downside of these Daily Drawing challenges is that as soon as I miss ONE day, my brain says" "WE HAVE FAILED!" and the motivation to continue just dries up. It is, of course, ridiculous.... But it's how my brain works... I'm TRYING to remember that it doesn't have to be ALL OR NOTHING - the "challenge" can be to see how many days you DO draw and post something. Maybe try to beat the number you did last year - achieve a personal best.
Despite not posting any pics for the last few days, I have not been idle. It's not like I haven't drawn ANYTHING on any of these days I "missed"... I just didn't get to drawing anything that I felt like posting. Everyday that I HAVE posted something, I made notes about ideas, I took reference photos, I did MULTIPLE drawings - mostly just rough sketches to see if it MIGHT look on paper like it does in my mind... before doing a "GOOD COPY" that I was okay with posting!
The days I didn't post anything, I did all teh other stuff... I just didn't get to doing a Final Copy or settle entirely on one idea or another...
Here are some of those Preliminary Drawings and doodles and such...
Day One - I just worked directly from an old photo
Day Two - first sketch.
Day Two - MORE sketching...
Day Three - I started off with some sketches of myself as a turtle... without looking too hard at any particular turtles...
Day Three - second page, sketching out the idea I would eventually draw for the final drawing.
So many sketches for Day Four... Starting with just a rough sketch of the Arc de Triomphe
More Day Four - sorting out the lay out of the pic and notes on Cheetahs colours and spot patterns.
A Final rough drawing for Day Four
Day Five - Again, just working directly from an old photo I took of one of my bikes.
Inspiration for Day Six had come from the fact that I'd actually been out riding earlier in the day on my Purple Karate Monkey. More pics can be seen on my Bike Blog!
First preliminary sketch of Day Six - plus a drawing of an actually Western Painted Turtle I did the next day, because... well... I thought I could try and draw myself as a specific type of turtle... instead of generic green which doesn't actually, necessarily look like ANY real, living turtle...
Another quick preliminary drawing for Day Six.
Missed days...
Day Seven's prompt was "Chiaroscuro" so I played around with some ideas involving cycling at night with heavy lighting - like from a car approaching from in front or behind or a streetlight overhead.
While doing some of the preliminary google searches to get an idea of what Chiaroscuro even was, I came across La Fornarina by Raphael... and thought it would be fun to replicate it... but with Princess Carolyn from the Bojack Horseman TV series...
Day Eight's prompt was "Line" which could have been a simple line drawing, but I was thinking start line or finish line or lines on pavement denoting bike lanes and ended up settling on picking a line down a steep descent - possibly through a rock garden... but never got to doing a good copy.
Also, another Painted Western Turtle...
Finally, Day Nine's prompt was "Gesture" and I was thinking of a person in an automobile making a rude gesture at a critter on a bike. Maybe it would have been a bird giving someone "The Bird"....
I didn't get to it as I went for a longer ride and then went out and did errands with Amanda. At one stop I through I'd just do gesture drawings of people going in and out of the store..
Initially, I thought she'd just be running in for five minutes... buuuuut in the end she was in there a LOT longer. (Like, over an HOUR!?). There were a lot more people that came and went... but I'd draw one... and then i'd wait for someone else... and then when I figured there woudln't be someone else I'd clean up the drawing and add some colour, but in the middle of that, like five. more people woudl suddenly show up and I'd just finish up the colouring and do the next one... but then no one would show up for five or ten minutes... ugh...
