Go to colored thumbnail pageThis page will have links to some of my drawings and also some information of how I draw and what I use to draw. You should be forewarned that I have never taken an art class in my life, but I've been drawing as a hobby when I have some free time for over 8 years. I don't know what other people will think, but I know that I've improved by leaps and bounds since the first began. Hope you enjoy and I'd love to get some feedback on the drawings if your so inclined.
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Ok, now for info on my drawing technique and materials.....
Drawing
I have a couple methods of drawing. Well, ok, actually the drawing part is always the same, it's the coloring step that generally can differ. Anyway, when drawing I always use regular 8.5x11 copier type paper. I know it's not the best (or probably even recommended) for drawing, but it's very cheap and works great for my needs. (In Japan, I've had to switch to different size paper, generally smaller, as they don't have 8.5x11) To draw I like to use 0.5mm mechanical pencils, Staedtler drawing pencils, or sharp regular #2 pencils. I like using HB lead in mechanical pencils and a nice clickable eraser is very handy.
Inking
After I've pencilled in a drawing, I generally ink it (at least if I have plans to color it). I've tried several different pen types to do this. I initially started with just black ballpoint and felt pens, but they didn't work very well and the felt pens would often run if I used watercolors with them. I quicky bought some nicer pens, like the Pentel (?) Uni-ball, which works quite nicely. I also tried Sakura Pigma Micron drawing pens which work quite well. I saw some nice drafting/technical pens in stores and eventually bought one, a Koh-i-Nor (sp), I think it was. It worked quite nicely, but was a pain sometimes to get the ink flowing and clean occaisionily. I eventually bought 2 more technical pens (a Staedtler and another Koh-i-Nor) in different sizes to use. The only real problem I've found from these pens is that if I didn't use them for a long time, the ink would dry out and it'd be a pain in the ass to get the ink flowing again. At one point, I tried using dip pens. The kind where the pen has a sharp metal nib that you have to dip in ink every so often to use. They were kinda fun to use, but I had a habit of dripping ink where I didn't want it and the metal nib seemed to actually scratch the paper up. Sometimes I'd actually make a hole in the paper with the nib or get too much ink in one place. They take great practice and patience to use well. In the end and at present I'm using cheap disposible technical drawing pens, currently I have a selection of different sizes from .005 to .02 of black Pilot Drawing Pens.
Coloring
I've used several different methods to color my drawings including:
The coloring methods are lined up in the order that I progressed through them. I began with a set of 48 Crayola colored pencils. You can do some nice stuff with colored pencils, but I found that I couldn't get the bold colors I wanted. It was possible if I applied enough pressure, but I didn't like it too much. Next I tried watercolors, just one or two cheap watercolor sets you get at the local drug store. I liked this alot better and found I could get some much brighter, bolder colors, but watercolors can also be hard to control and work with. In high school, my home room was the art room and I was kinda friends with the art teacher. I never took an art class from him, but I'd show him some of my work and he had this great set of Berol Prismacolor markers that I tried out a couple times. Wow, they were great and there was a large palette of colors to choose from. I could get nice bold colors or whatever I wanted, and they were really nice for shading because you could use them on top of each other to get different shades and colors. I picked some Berol Prismacolor art markers up real cheap at a local surplus store and used them of several drawings. At this time I was using both cheap water colors and the art markers. About this time (middle high school) I became aware of Hajime Sorayama's incredible airbrush work and picked up a cheap single action external airbrush for $10. Unfortunately I couldn't afford an air compressor, so I got an adapter and would run it off of a spare tire I keep around. This meant I could use the airbrush fine for like 10 minutes, then I'd have to pump up the tire again.... and on and on, a little inconvienient, but worth it. I bought some colored inks and used those in the airbrush. I really loved using the airbrush because it was so easy to color/paint with and you could make gradations, fades, color changes, highlights, shading, chrome, etc, very easily and quickly. I never got far with it. I found that the airbrush's spray couldn't be made narrow enough for the small details I sometimes wanted to do and it was a little pain to care and clean the airbrush after everytime I used it. I should've invested in a better quality Badger or Paasche airbrush and compressor, but haven't done it yet. It was at the end of high school/beginning of college that I really got into computers and finally got one myself. Using a scanner at UMO, I scanned in some inked drawings and would try coloring them in Adobe Photoshop and a few other programs. I never got too good at it, but I did a few good jobs. I find it hard to select what I want to select in computer paint programs, which can frustrate me. It was also about this time, late high school/college that I got into anime/animation and my drawings went from serious comic book art style to more cartoony/animated style, as can be seen by the eyes, head, feet and hands of most of my drawings. I had some aspirations of being a cartoonist, but figured that probably wouldn't happen. I decided to try making some of my own cartoon cels though, so I got some tranparencies (like the ones for overhead projectors) and traced some drawings onto them. I initially tried coloring them with water colors and art markers, but found I didn't like the transparent colors that they produced. I bought some bottles of acrylic paint and found that worked very nicely. The nice thing about doing cels is that you trace your drawings onto the cel on oneside in ink, flip it over and paint the backside with the acrylics. Then when you're done, flip it over again and all your ink lines are still there and the image looks great! It can be slightly troublesome to paint, but looks very cool when done. I've done quite a few in this style and really like it. One problem is that sometime the paint and/or ink can scratch off with your fingernail or someother object. Since I came to Japan I've picked up this great box of 24 Sakura Watercolors in pretty large tubes. I got it in the kids art section, but I seem to always get my watercolors from the kids section, maybe because I can seem to do great things with cheap watercolors. I also picked up a few bottles of Dr. PH Martin's pigment and found that it works very nice to paint with too. Somewhat like a mix of watercolors and acrylics in texture and transparency. I need to try the Dr PH Martin watercolors sometime too. I also finally bought a good quality brush. Up until now, I generally used a Testors #0 (?) hobby art brush because they were cheap and pretty good. The new brush I got has an all metel shaft and replacable bristle head. I've only used it once so far, but I love it. Much better than those cheap brushes I'm used to using.
Favorite Artists
Masamune Shirow, Alan Davis, Arthur Adams, Jim Lee, Joe Madeuria, Humberto Ramos, Walt Simonson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Hajime Sorayama, Travis Charest, Chris Bachelo, Walt Kelly, Bill Watterson, Windsor Mckay, Whilce Portactio, Robert DeJesus, Jeff Smith and Norman Rockwell