Doodles for Stretching Myself

[bcholmes]

I've been trying to stretch myself with my cartooning. I feel like I'm getting a lot better at inking, and general figure drawing. I don't tend to have much action in my pictures, so I've been playing with action poses. Faces are the other area that I need to spend more time working on.

I've been reading a coupl'a cartooning blogs. I spent a bunch'a time reading lesmcclaine's journal, and his Jonny Crossbones comic.

I felt really inspired by Michael Cho's stuff. I love his Kirby-esque gouache pieces done in white, black and (usually) a single other colour. Take a look at his Captain America: what interests me is how he removed lines from the sketch to the painting. The line that defines his shoulder and back. The top line of his leg.

He also has a whole series of pictures of back alleys of Toronto, which I like.

I can't say that he was on my radar, but his style struck me as very familiar. He's done some book covers that I've seen, and I remember a piece he did as a window display at Pages (Dear Queen St. W.: I've overlooked your increasing gentrification, because the restaurants have been worth it, but I will never forgive you for driving out Pages).

I got so inspired that I decided to try my hand at something similar. I pulled out my almost-untouched gouache, and created the following piece:

Obviously Cho's compositions are much more interesting than mine, but it was fun to do. I think this might be the first time that I've actually used my gouache outside of class, and I think I really like it. I think I'm done with watercolour. Watercolour hates me.

I mean, I really like the fact that I can put any colour on top of any other colour (in theory). I put a spot of light on her lips after all the other colours. Watercolour would never let me do that. I wanna experiment with this a bit more.