Re-inking the treehouse

/

26/365

Every morning I look at my previous night’s work. In the past I’ve found fault with pretty much everything thing I do, whether it’s my fiction or my drawings. I don’t take that voice seriously any more. Too many times I’ve looked at my old work and thought, “Damn, that’s good. Why did I give up so easily.” I’ve learned the my inner critic is just a real noisy bitch with nothing constructive to say. So, today I looked at my inked treehouse and liked it. But, that’s not to say that I can’t improve the line work. The problem is that inking with a technical pen makes for a flat drawing with all the lines the same visually uninteresting width.

I slapped my sketch on the lightbox and re-inked it with heavier lines in some places. The tree house definitely has more “pop”, and I added a door in the tree trunk.

The color palette at the bottom corner is the Tom Purvis advertising poster scheme that I’m going to use when I paint this picture tomorrow. I like the friendly colors. I found it in the Retro Graphics book.

That front door looks inviting.

Would you like to live in a treehouse? I would!

/

25/365

I decided that my Jay family will live in a treehouse because I always wanted a treehouse when I was a kid, preferably a treehouse like the one in “The Swiss Family Robinson.” Here are the original sketch and the first inking. I used my lightbox to do the tracing.

My scanner didn’t want to scan this. Hence, a quick photo.

That ladder has got to go!

Drawing, tracing, lightboxing, inking, and painting

/

Tracing happily away, unaware that tempestuous watercolor gods are about to teach me a lesson in humility.

Today I decided to try my nib pens. I’ve had them for years and I’ve played with them now and then, made a big mess, and then decided they weren’t for me. But I really love pen and ink drawings, and lately I’ve been obsessed with Hergé and Hal Foster, both supreme masters of the inky line.

I created a pencil drawing, traced it with a liner pen, used the lightbox to then trace it onto some Strathmore Visual Journal bristol vellum paper, the painted it with watercolor. All went well except for the watercolor. I’m a brute with a watercolor brush. When I tried to lift some color using a paper towel, the paper started to disintegrate.

So, the lesson again, is be gentle, patient, and treat your paper kindly.

Keep the washes thin and let them dry completely before glazing another layer. And don’t rub the paper, at least not the Strathmore Visual Journal bristol vellum.


Redo with lightbox, pen and ink, & watercolor

/

Today my commitment to myself was to get out the light box and pencil trace yesterday’s watercolor of the jay in the chimney, ink it, then transfer the image to watercolor paper using the lightbox. I then dressed the inked watercolor paper up with watercolor. After all this old-school processing, I digitized the watercolor painting by scanning it and importing it into Photoshop.

Here’s how it turned out. The dark background was added in Photoshop.

One more thing… I’m signing all of my images now on the off chance that any images posted in Pinterest will give interested folks a way to find the original source, doukat.com.