Scratchboard Tests

I recently drew a white on black numberism drawing for a client's logo, and it spurred a bit of inspiration for me. The white on black was dynamic and showed a whole new side to numberism, but the white pens were lacking. I have yet to find a white pen with a 005 tip or aything close to that. The pens I found just barely did the trick, but left me wanting more. I like the fine precision. I adore the detail.




So, the natural option seems to be scratch board. I went out to Art Media today and bought a few pieces of scratch board and drew my first test. I made my own scratcher tools, and they need a little perfecting, but the technique itself seems to be working, and I have to say... I LIKE IT. :)


As an added bonus, I can use watercolor to paint on the scratched numbers! There so much potential here.



This is the first test. It's rough and sketchy, but I'm feeling all the motivation to keep up with this new media.

I'm playing around with what numberism can do outside of it's usual routine. Mixed media, pen, ink, oil, watercolor, knives. I want to see what it can do outside of its comfort zone.
I'm also trying mixing numberism with some line design.

So many ways to play.

My model is Kenna Holman, and the photograph reference was taken by Ian Dawson.

Issue One Online

It's true: Issue One, 'Always Keep A Gun Beside the Bed' is online. You can see it at it's SmackJeeves Location
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A Teenager's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Life ain't easy being a zombie hunter. Max Miracle knows this firsthand: as the son of Melvin and Soli Miracle, Professional Hunters of the Undead, he's handled his share of mindless monsters - and that was just other high school kids. But when a case brings his family to the small town of Estacada, OR, Max finds more than he expected in Kara, the transgender girl next door. In between dodging the local authorities, fighting decapitated Bigfoot experts, passing Calculus, and working up the guts to ask Kara to prom, Max must figure out a way to stop the looming zombie apocalypse...before it's too late for us all!



Written by Rachel Mohr. Chapter 1 illustrated by Sienna Morris.

Issue One

I'm happy to say that Issue 1 of "Teenager's Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse" is finished! I'm just going to show a little snippet here, because soon, the website will be up where you can see the whole thing for yourself at your leisure.
This was the first time I've drawn a comic book. For years, I've read them, and admired them, and re read them, despite the fact that there was probably something much more productive I could be doing at the time. So this was, needless to say, very exciting for me.

It was also nerveracking. As I said, this was my first, and I was nervous. Generally, I am a traditional artist; drawing or painting one image to tell a whole story, and I take a fairly long time working on just that one image. Here, I was telling a story with 12 pages with about 5 images each to tell the story. It was a new media for me, and it took a while to figure out how the media worked. I in no way have it all figured out after just this one issue, but I have a good idea, and once finishing the comic book, I am swelling with new ideas every day.

From the very beginning, I wanted to draw the comic book in two tone black and white. However, we decided to go with color, calling on the talents of my husband, Tab, to bring it to life for us. Due to time crunches and heavy work loads in our company (things Tab needed to do), we eventually sided against color, which was disapointing, because Tab's coloring is really fantastic. But I was also excited, because now I got to draw the comic how I had originally imagined it.



I want to tell you all about what's coming in the comic and what it's all about, but I have a track record of ruining the story by saying too much, so I won't... but damn do I want to!

Instead, I'll just post the link once the site is up.

Hoarde

"Bad Day" :)zom

Issue 1 of Teenagers Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse doesn't have much opportunity for gory zombies, but I will soon. So, now I have a chance to draw some mutilated corpses. Sounds grotesque, but it's actually quite fun... for me anyway.
Anatomy is fascinating, and mixing moving (walking) creatures with the havoc of torn tissue, broken bones and muscle is just too much fun.

I will be doing these more often now. (being that more action is coming just around the corner) I'm referencing anatomy books and such, but will have to dive into some creepier studying too. Some of that is not as fun.

Spilled Ink

A mistake on my part resulted in us losing thousands of dollars worth of ink for our printer. A sad day, indeed, but we quickly found a use for it. The trouble is that all the ink mixed together; magenta with black with yellow with cyan) so there was no saving them for any printing purposes as they were all contaminated with eachother. So we poured it all into this bottle for my own experimental uses. Being that it's the same ink I use to print on canvas, I'm sure I can use it on the excess canvas we always have laying around. The final color looks a bit like dark blood, and is admittedly a bit creepy.



For now, I decided to try it with a few brushes on a character sketch page of Kara. I've been told to try to use brushes for inking. I've been using a micron pen brush, but it dies out pretty quickly. It looks like I need to go pick up some more precise (smaller and better shaped) brushes and play with this more. I can also see a lot of texture I can get from this that could bring some nice dark depth to some of the later scenes.

Panel peek

I haven't been posting much lately. Mostly because most of what I've been drawing has been for the comic, which we're waiting to show until it's finished.... but.... I thought I'd give you a peek at a couple panels. Shh....


On news: Tabulanis Snow has been working on the color for the comic and I'm very very pleased. The texture and feel is perfect for what I had in mind.

Color teaser panels coming soon. He's a bit of a perfectionist, and won't let me show anything yet.