Monday, 16 July 2012

• Pens

  ...or what I do at work.

  Well, not really.
  

  But sometimes I am bored while I'm waiting for the spinny thing to spin on the computer and so I doodle. I do most of my doodling on Post-it Notes with the pens I have on hand. Sometimes I get stuck on a theme - like the time two winters ago when I decided to draw snowflakes nonstop.
  

  We then got about 8 feet of snow that winter. Coworker Gail told me that I must have somehow conjured the winter by drawing all those snowflakes. I then proceeded to draw flowers instead. :)
  

  Anyway, lately, I have been aimless in my doodles. See?
  

  

   

  I don't know what any of those things are supposed to be. The one on the bottom in the center, Coworker Kathy saw. First she said, "What is it?" and then she said, "I like it."
  

  "You like it?" I asked. "You don't know what it is."
  

  "No, but I like it," she said. "It's really detailed."
  

  Matt said they reminded him of those funky drawing that DaVinci used to do. You know, with the flying machine diagrams and all that. Except that none of these things has a purpose. I just started doodling and that's what came out.
  

  What does that say about me?
  

  I don't know.
  

  Anyway, I got tired last week of drawing random gadgets and stuff so I decided to draw some peoples instead and here's what I came up with:
  

  

   

  It's hard - probably not impossible but hard - to draw skin tones with pens. The pens I have I bought myself at Staples because I like to use different colored pens at work - and not just for my doodles. They're Pentel R.S.V.P in case you want to go out and buy your own. I bought a ten pack but I lost a few of them and so only have a few left, some of which are almost dead. I have Red, Pink, Green, Orange, a little bit of Purple, and I think that's it? I also have a fine, felt-tip pen that I used a lot in the gadgetry drawings, and a blue pen that I forget the technical term for but I also used in the gadget drawings.
  

  I have been fairly bored at work of late, in case you hadn't noticed.
  

  Anyway, I was having fun with the combining of colors while doing the above peoples. I like to do this with colored pencils, also. Just keep piling on the colors to get richer and richer type stuff. Pens are a little different - they don't blend as well, and there's less control over how dark the ink comes out. But I was experimenting and learning and then at some point it dawned on me that I should try doing this sort of drawing at home where I have more time and energy to focus on it, instead of scribbling things down while waiting for programs to load without ever really focusing on the thing.
  

  Also, you know, I should maybe be thinking about work? Nah...
  

  So anyway I went out to Staples this weekend just to buy these pens again and then I took them home and did a few drawings. I sketched out the basics in pencil, then erased the pencil lines and went over them with pens. So here was the first try:
  

  

  I'm quite pleased with the color of her hair on this. First serious attempt I think I've ever made at drawing armor. I originally intended it to be simply plates of metal, sort of like a knight in shining armor, but wasn't quite sure how to effectively illustrate such a thing without searching out some sort of reference photo online and I was too lazy to do that. So I went with armor that sort of mimics Samurai armor - little woven plates, maybe metal, maybe just tightly woven fibers. I've seen it in museums and had an okay picture of it in my head to draw. Probably allows more movement than a knight from the middle ages?
  

  This was also an extension of another thought that I've had in my head for quite a while, which was to draw a fighting woman with somewhat reasonable clothes. I like to watch anime, specifically the magical girl sort of anime, or something where there are women (or other people, too) who fight. And I like regular action movies, too, but the thing is that women almost never wear sensible clothing. They wear short skirts in anime, or they wear basically a tank top that shows their stomach and a pair of pants that hang off their hips.

  I can understand the reasoning behind this - just because a woman is a fighter doesn't mean you don't want to show off her femininity. A woman fighter dressed in fatigues would barely be distinguishable as a woman. But surely there is a way to make this armor more feminine? The above is not that ideal, of course, but it was a thought in that direction which motivated the design.
  

  Also, this:
  

  

  Which is quite feminine and not at all good for fighting. Ha. :P
  

  The hair coloring in this shows up better in the scan than in real life. The secret to making brown (when you haven't got brown) is to put opposite colors together. Red & Green, Blue & Orange, Purple & Yellow. I used the red, green, orange, and blue colors on the hair. If you look really closely it looks sort of like a rainbow of lines, but if you pull backward or maybe just cross your eyes, it looks brown. I guess that's sort of like the theory of Pointilism, which I haven't the patience for at all, tons of little tiny dots. Bleh. :P
  

  Anyway, that was that. And so now maybe I will think about work while at work?
  

  ...nah.
  

   

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