Bramble Vine Comics

Very often I'll draw from photos in the newspaper or a magazine as an exercise. This one in particular I did just before I started inking another page in my comic book as a way to loosen up. I just picked a random photo out of Time Magazine and found this one of Robert Socolow. He's a professor at Princeton University and the article this photo was used for is about what he and another scientist are coming up with in solving global warming.

Anyway, I like to do a heavy ink portrait like this to get the cartoon juices flowing. I think I was a little too heavy on the left side of the drawing, but oh well.

Labels: book, cartoon, cartoonist, comic, sketch, sketchbook

This is a more recent page out of my sketchbook. As you can see, I'm working on some more cartoony characters. I'm in the middle of writing a story that I want to look more comic strip-ish. I've been looking at some comics from the 30's and 40's for design inspiration on this one.

Labels: book, cartoon, cartoonist, comic, sketch, sketchbook

Here's another older page from my sketchbooks. This one is about a year old. I'm not sure what was going on in my head when I did these, some sort of aggressive cigarette character. I like the forced smoking effect, very disturbing for some reason. The guy on the left was just a random photo in a magazine I had lying around. I don't remember who it is.

Labels: book, cartoon, cartoonist, comic, sketch, sketchbook

I just posted another page in the comics gallery, however I need to make some changes there. I'm trying to do everything I can by hand. After finishing my Flights of Fancy Funnies book I regretted relying on the computer so much. But, my lettering is just terrible in the word balloons. I'm going to replace it with a font I think. I'm going to hunt through Blam-Bot to find one that comes close to the size and layout of my handwriting and see if I can replace my words with the new font. If that goes well I go back and fix the Spartan Love page in the same way.

Labels: book, cartoon, cartoonist, comic, sketch, sketchbook

This past weekend I attended a meeting of the DFW Sketch Group. This is a group of artists and writers who get together in the Dallas Fort Worth area and draw and talk comics. I had a great time and really enjoyed being able to talk about drawing and cartooning with people who really know what they are talking about. Several of the guys there were incredibly talented. One guy had work that I was especially impressed with, David DeGrand. His sketchbook is just amazing.

My sketchbook post today is directly inspired by Dave's work. I tried to draw the same type of characters he was. I'm not sure I succeeded, but a big thanks to Dave for the inspiration.

Labels: book, cartoon, cartoonist, comic, sketch, sketchbook