Analog Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Long Time, No Post —

So, yeah, it's been approximately forever since my last post. Things got really busy about a month ago with work (I'm coloring 2 books for Marvel at the moment, plus various other covers and commissions) so I haven't really had much time for sketching. And lately I've been pretty unhappy with the results. Oh, well. I'll probably have more time in the coming months, plus I've really fallen in love with Alex Toth's work lately, and that's been inspiring me to pick up the pencil more often. Anyway, here's what's worth posting from the lat 2 months. It's not much, but it's better than nothing!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:23:00 +0000

Apparently, I am a cheap caricaturist —

I love my mom, but from time to time, she'll ask me to do things I really don't want to do, like draw a caricature of her boss on a train. Apparently, she talked to an actual caricaturist and he wanted like a whole hundred dollars, so she said screw that and press-ganged me into doing it for nothing. Actually, she offered me 50 bucks, but I'd rather get paid nothing for this lousy drawing.

Hilariously, I have no idea if this caricature even remotely resembles her boss, since the only ref she sent was a tiny jpg of the guy taken from like a football field away. Also, trains are fucking hard to draw. You will observe that I had no idea what to do with the front, nor did I care to figure it out.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:18:00 +0000

Spidery-Man, plus cheesecake —

Still loving that Pentel brush pen. Still loving tits.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:39:00 +0000

I Steal You Scanner, Foo —

Ha! Who needs to buy a scanner when you can just steal one every two weeks when your studio mate is out of town? Not me, that's who. Also, I gotta say there's something to be said for only posting the most interesting stuff from the past 2 weeks. Nice to be able to weed out the crap doodles and still have stuff worth posting!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:26:00 +0000

Jeez, I really need to get my own scanner —

Haven't been able to hop on my studio mate's scanner in a bit. Anyway, in addition to still keeping at the gesture/stick figure work, I've been slowly working my way through Loomis's Fun With A Pencil. Figure I'll post some stuff from that:

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:40:00 +0000

Test —

Just thought I'd test out a new process for drawing. I drew blue line stick figures and rough structure lines, fleshed those out with a 2H pencil, and finished with my Pentel brush pen. Pretty happy with the results.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Low Fidelity —

Decided I needed to listen to the Beta Band's "Dry the Rain" and the High Fidelity Soundtrack was the only copy I had of the track. Saw the cover and figured it'd be fun to try to reproduce in my new Moleskine, which it was, until I tried to work faster and totally arsed the inking on that last face. Oh, well. I found it tricky to get the features placed because I was only drawing part of a head. I probably should have sketched in the proper structure lines first before putting details down. Oh well. Fun drawing anyway. Still loving that brush pen.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:56:00 +0000

Moleskine! —

I also picked up a Moleskine sketchbook for my birthday. I've heard such great things, and was so blown away by Sean Phillips' and Duncan Fegredo's Intersections that I thought I'd pick one up. It's cool. Great paper, and I'm getting used to the size. At first I felt it was a bit too small and restrictive, but there's a lot to be said for being able to work smaller and faster.

I also learned really quickly that, as nice as the paper is, it sure doesn't hold up to either Copic markers or watercolor pencils for shit. Grr.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Pentel Brush Pen!!! —

Pentel Brush Pen!!

Seriously, how great is this thing?! Karl Kerschl uses it! Sean Phillips does too! It's badass. I was always afraid of inking with a brush, but I got one of these for my birthday (I asked for it) and now the fear, she is gone. I mean, I'm not gonna throw out my Staedtler pigment liners or anything, but I fricking love this brush pen. So much so that I went out and bought a really nice Windsor-Newton brush from Opus, which is also great. Inking is really fun suddenly. Now if only I didn't suck so much at it ...

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:36:00 +0000

More of the Same —

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah —

I know. I haven't been posting. I have been drawing, though, so that's gotta count for something, right?

Right?

On this first one, I got to wondering if all this stick figure work would pay off, so I fleshed out one of the sticks and was happy enough with the results that I resolved to draw about a thousand more sticks.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:33:00 +0000

MORE! —

Can't stop drawing these!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:24:00 +0000

More Stick Figures —

These are fun.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:55:00 +0000

Figure Drawing For All It's Worth —

A few months ago, I won an e-bay auction for a copy of Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. When the book arrived, though, it was so musty I could barely stand to have it in my apartment. It sat for about a month in a black garbage bag filled with kitty litter. Eventually the stench of it was bearable enough for me to pick up, but I didn't feel I had the time to devote to studying the book until recently. Loomis really was an excellent draughtsman, and the instruction he gives is priceless.

Loomis stresses the value of construction. Here are the first of as many of Loomis's simple stick figures as it takes for me to feel I have a good enough grasp of proportion and balance to move onto Loomis's more complex stick figures. Not a lot of fun to look at, but good practice.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:37:00 +0000

Watercolor is hard —

That's it, really. A few months back, I picked up some supplies and a book and thought I'd give it a go. Not bad results for a first go. Hopefully I'll be able to make time to do one of these every month or so.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:29:00 +0000

Doodles —

Here's some doodling I did with my 3-year-old son last night. It's scary how I can draw all these Pixar characters pretty much from memory now.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:15:00 +0000

I'm BAAAACK —

Huh. Like 5 months, no post. Crap. That wasn't the plan. Ah well, I was busy and no one reads this blog anyway. Who cares. Here's some sketches I did a few months back. The first is of Viggo. I was reading The Road and couldn't believe how perfectly they had cast the father.

This next is just a silly drawing of Power Girl, who is apparently some kind of female Super-man analog, but all I really know about her is that she's got these ridiculously huge tits that fanboys go ape over. Anyway, I thought it would be funny if I drew her in a classic Superman pose, ripping open her shirt to save the day, except instead of the big yellow and red 'S' under there, it's just a huge pile of tits. Funny idea, but the pose sucks and I can't draw shirts.

This last drawing is of my son, who is way cuter than this skecth would lead you to believe. What I learned -- don't draw kids' teeth like that. Also, don't fuck up the eyes like that. Pretty happy with the hands, though.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:01:00 +0000

Last of the Dregs —

Okay, wow, after those faces, this is the last of the stuff from my sketchbook. I haven't really done much drawing since I started working professionally as a colorist and since my daughter was born -- I just don't have the time, it seems. But that's why I started this blog, after all -- to try to force myself to make time for it. Anyway, here's the last of the old. Soon with the new, internets, I promise!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:14:00 +0000

Faced! : Part III —

The rest of those faces. I stopped numbering them after a while, and it looks like I didn't quite make it to 100 before getting bored. It's not that I think drawing from reference is necessarily bad -- it's just that I don't want to be that guy, you know? Maybe I'll explain in detail later, as in once I start posting new stuff on this blog often enough to actually bother letting anyone know it exists.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:56:00 +0000

Faced! : Part II —

... and more of those faces. Pretty much all from ref except for the especially crap ones.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:47:00 +0000

Faced! —

Well, after doing all those hands and feet, I thought I'd try some faces, which are far more interesting and way, way harder.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:51:00 +0000

Best Foot Forward: Part III —

And here's the rest of those feet. Man, I drew these like 2 years ago now. Can that be right? Wow. I wonder if I can even still draw feet. Anyway, once I get all of these old sketches up, I'll concentrate on posting more recent stuff. Eventually, I'll be all out of old drawings to post and then I'll be forced to draw and paint more often if I want to keep posting. That's the plan, anyway.

Haha -- looking back, I think it's fitting that the last pair of feet I drew is totally the worst. I rock!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:37:00 +0000

Best Foot Forward: Part II —

The problem with drawing feet is not just that they're fairly complex shapes (though not nearly as complex or articulated as hands): the main problem with feet is drawing them so that they look like they're actually supporting weight. I've colored comic books that feature not a single instance of a foot convincingly bearing weight -- usually the penciler knows he sucks at this and draws rocks or smoke or other conspicuous objects in the foreground to obscure the feet and his ignorance. It doesn't work though, as anyone with a brain can tell that it's just cheating. I figure that if I'm serious about learning to draw properly, there's really no point cheating.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Best Foot Forward —

More pages from my old sketchbook, circa 2006. This is the first half of a series of a hundred feet.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Fairbairn) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:18:00 +0000

More Grappling With Bridgman —

Yeah, here's every other 'drawing from life' I did before giving up. Some are poses from his book, some are my attempts to apply his technique to drawing from ref. I hear he's got a pretty good figure drawing book as well. Maybe I'll check that out next. Anything to avoid actually drawing from life, apparently.