Tag: art

Random Sketches from a Decade Ago

I think the original idea was to have this be a sketch of the Archangel Michael...

I have a couple of half-cooked ideas for blog posts but since they’re not quite down yet let’s critic some of my old art instead. All of it is on paper and with pencil because back when I was drawing a tablet cost around $1000! So digital was right out.

A Tyranid hormaguant from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000

As you can see from these first two sketches I wasn’t comfortable with trying to represent objects three dimensionally. Everything is either scene in full on or from the side, anything else and I got confused. Also I hadn’t quite figured out the human skeletal-musculature system. I think in the hormagaunt one I’ve used every single possible shading technique possible in one single image… Also, if you’re having trouble deciphering the face on the angel above you’re looking at his chin, the face is raised skyward… I don’t know how long I worked on that and it still doesn’t look right.

This is just one page of many from an idea I had for a sci-fi world and video game

Also note, that like Rob Liefeld I couldn’t draw feet and so they ended up being these boxy boot like things.  I still think that rat hound looks pretty neat, though.I find it strangely hilarious that I was trying to design the optimal ears for this race of post-humans…

some weird looking worms, a sketch of a person behind a wall, and... cloak stuff?

I have pages of quick sketches like the one in the top-left of this image. So much easier to draw when I don’t have to worry about muscles, hands, feet, clothing, etc… I even had a name for these kind of sexless homunculi,”bioderms.” I don’t know where that term came from but I’m sure I didn’t come up with it myself. Notice that as a true artist I couldn’t just cross out the sketches I didn’t like but instead created big “Xs” by crossing two triangles. The worms with the shiny carapace head cap are another thing I drew a lot of. I think at the time I used them as a physical representation of sin/evil. I know I have a sketch somewhere that is merely the human figure with one of those coiled up in the groin region…. Yeah, let’s just move along… The overactive cape/cloak on the figure in the lower-right should tell you that I was far too familiar with and influenced by Todd McFarlane’s artwork. Please note that years before it became cool I was into “tribal” designs.

Every once in a great while I think I should take a stab at drawing again and then I pull out these sketches and see why I stopped. Go ahead and put your criticisms in the comments below!

PS – if you want to see these at full size just click on them, but I’m really scratching my head at why you’d want to.

 

Beautiful sculpture from 11,000 years ago

The Ain Sakhri Lovers found near Bethlehem

I recently started listening to the BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, a collaboration between BBC 4 and the British Museum. The goal of the program is, just like the title says, to tell the entirety of human history through 100 objects that can be found at the British Museum.

Sketch of the Ain Sakhri Lovers showing it from all sides.

The seventh episode is all about the Ain Sakhri Lovers sculpture which is believed to have been carved around  9000 CE. Some have considered it the first depiction of human lovemaking in the arts. The stone is especially noted for its clever depictions depending on how it is viewed. As you can see from the picture above the stone can be two lovers embracing, a penis, a vagina, or breasts.

The reason I’m writing about it, is I was stunned and a little awed by the sculpture. That 11,000 odd years ago a man or woman who is nothing like me, but just like me, took this cobble out of a stream and sculpted this piece and here it is now speaking to me in a wordless language that is as powerful and understandable today as it was then…

Parents stopped by. Dropped off one of my old hobbies/talents…

The last time I touched any of this stuff was more than a decade ago...

My parents came through Fourth of July weekend on the way up to Wyoming for their summer vacation. They brought up with them the last of my belongings that were at my childhood home. It was mostly art supplies. I don’t consider myself that creative and I certainly don’t think I have much talent. But, in my family I was always the creative one, the one with the wild ideas and the ability to convey those ideas through word or image. I took art classes through middle and high school and might have taken a quarter of figure drawing at one point in community college. Since then? I haven’t done any sort of creative work outside of the occasional writing and photography.

pencils, inks, erasers, etc...

Sadly, the one thing that my parents forgot was my old portfolio that has all the work I did in high school/college in it. That is still sitting in a closet somewhere in the desert. At least it isn’t outside where the extreme weathers would surely ruin the paper, chalks, oils, etc…

Black and white crayons, brushes, calligraphy pen, ink...

I don’t why I didn’t pursue art further. I had time in college to take classes. I must have thought that it wasn’t worth the time to practice at something I never considered myself very good at and so couldn’t do anything with later on in life. Yes, I realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who got their BA in Classical Civilizations. I think another reason might be that I never had any interest in pursuing the craft through digital means… I like getting my hands dirty and feeling the paper beneath my fingers; and my parents didn’t have the money or processing power (this was the mid/late 90s) to get a drawing tablet or the software then in use. So, I sunk my time into other things: poetry and photography. I miss it sometimes. Now that I have all this stuff just sitting around maybe I’ll pick it up again… Who knows?

More pencils and graphites. Those might be water colors on the right?
This is a surprising amount of spray paints and sealers...

If you would like to see some of my old creative work and new stuff as well you can check out my other blog: Fictive Funk. I’ll be posting up old sketches all this week and next!

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