A radical change today, both in subject and work! You've seen that I've been keeping a slow pace for a few months. You know, real life events and rest of boring stuff. I hope that things will begin to come back to normal in the next weeks (whatever "normal" means these days!).
While I haven't been able to paint as much as I would have liked, I've managed to draw a little bit again. I didn't have much materials, but my old reliable pencil and a ballpen were all I needed.
The initial sketch isn't that much impressive, so I think I'll show the final result first and then I'll go through the step by step:
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Old school drawing
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The story behind is quite short. I've been out of home for work and wasn't able to travel with minis and paints. But I just couldn't stay idle. So one day I came out with this doodle on a tiny notebook:
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You can tell the pic is mine because there is a lamp in the back. Unintended treadmark
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That day I didn't have any regular A4 sheet of paper at hand, but I found this huge A3 calendar in the office and I said to myself: "hey, I've never worked on such a big paper, let's give it a try".
So you know, Fortune favours the bold (or, in my case, the fool). I got the A3 to the hotel and started with the pencils:
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You can't really see a damn thing, I don't blame you
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Oh, some more definition
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Hmm, close enough to the idea
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I always used to work with some technical pens of different line widths, but I didn't have any, so I used a ballpen. Fortunately working on a A3 means I didn't have to be too afraid of different line widths, as I could work better with such a large area.
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And there we go!
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Slow progress day by day
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Ballpen for scale. That's the tool I used
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Now I think you can finally get a glimpse of the composition
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I was so scared of screwing it all with the sky that I left it for the end
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Oh, different hotel, so different table
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Final shot!
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I won't claim I did anything original or good. This was simply my way back to drawing after long years of not having touched a pencil, and a way to fill in lost hours between hotels while working far from home. As soon as I got my eye on the A3 calendar sheet I knew the kind of project I wanted; something crowded, with one main action to focus on and maybe another one on the back. I was of course heavily influenced by the illustrations of old by mighty Tony Ackland or Tony Hough (Not that I'm claiming to compare to them, of course!!) and so I tried to fill everything. You know, horror vacui and all that.
Well, I was enormously rusty, but all in all, I'm happy of having met the pencil and pen again. It provided me an enormous amount of joy and relax, and that's all I ask of the hobby!
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Maximum resolution I can provide!
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Now that I'm back home again I'm going back to regular minis and stuff. I don't know if I'll draw again anytime soon, but I'll let you know if that happens!