Thursday, January 10, 2008

Getting off me arse


All this talk about the Kubert correspondence course and the accompanying shame of my progress got me thinking. So's last night I dug out the unfinished assignment page and threw it on my drawing table. I'm still a little loopy due to some super antibiotics the doc gave me for a throat issue and got sent home from work. Figured that be a perfect time to start back up and the second panel on the page is rather simple. A long shot at night of a Scottish castle on a foggy moor. I'll try to ink it tonight, but we're having company this evening, so's I kinda doubt it. Tomorrow would be a safe bet, set your watch and warrant. Until next time.

UPDATE: Here's the rough inks for it. Still gonna go back and do lots of retouching, but I'm gonna wait until I'm off me antibiotics. Messing me up a bit still.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crap, you make that look easy...I would sit over it and ponder...eventually killing three or four sheets of paper...then again, not saying you didn't, just my thought for the day...yikes!

Tonight I am watching Day of the Dead to get me back in the swing of drawing Bub...I think I got him down pat...

Christian D. Leaf said...

Excellent news, McGill.

The penciling may seem easy, but I sure effed up the inks. Should've practiced the fog technique a little more. Oh well. That's why they make white opaque.

Anonymous said...

What lies in that castle...is UNHOLY!!!
dum...Dum...DUMMMM!!!

Pretty cool!

renecarol said...

I've spent way too much time thinking about your assignment here the last couple of days. You say that it was a simple assignment to draw "a long shot at night of a Scottish castle on a foggy moor." I would think that's too much work and I wouldn't do it unless I absolutely had to. If that were my assignment (or my daughter's assignment and I was trying to give her guidance as to how to make it work which I actually do a lot of that- its crazy what they've made her draw). I would think well I know what Windsor Castle looks like so I have some point of reference there. Which is more than what I had 10 years ago. But that'd be a British castle not a Scottish castle. So I'd have to do some research on Scotch Architecture to try and figure out what makes a Scottish castle unique. I imagine it would be shape of the towers. Because if the assignment qualified the kind of castle I'd imagine that would be important. Now your sketch reminds me Kensington Palace. Not so much that it looks like it but more of my reaction to seeing it. I didn't look like anything. It was just a building with a fence around it and pretty gate. I raised my hand and asked the tour guide "Shouldn't it be bigger?" He gave me a look like stupid dumb@$$ Americans don't know anything. And he said "It’s a palace; not a castle. Palaces were built as residences for royal families. Castles have towers and drawbridges and big stone walls around them." Oh. So a few days later I got to see Windsor Castle. And I was impressed. I'm not easily impressed but I walked around oohing and aahing everything. It was beautiful. It was bigger than my mind would have comprehended without having seen it. More like a whole city than just a couple of buildings and towers. And I would have been completely overwhelmed if someone had asked to reduce it to paper.

Christian D. Leaf said...

I remember Kensington well. That and Buckingham are the only palaces I've seen. Though I did climb to the top of Blarney Castle. (DIdn't kiss the Blarney Stone though with the nasty rumor and all.) That would've been a great castle to draw, but of course, it's Irish.

As I knew it was a long shot I didn't get too deep into architecture. I cheated and used an image search on Getty and up popped Edinburgh Castle. Clean, easy shapes and lines. Also did a search on moors too, not that I really had to with the fog, but figured I'd do what I could.

Getty is a great resource for reference material. Used it yesterday to find a stone fountain for the third and fourth panels. I'm pretty sure the fountain isn't Scottish, but the style is close enough that it should work. I did the thumbnails last night and I'm hoping to have this page finished by Friday to ship out.

renecarol said...

I bet Ireland is beautiful. One of my friends was dating someone from Ireland when we were in England (he went to our school) and she went to Ireland all the time. Some people went to Paris. I never went anywhere. London was expensive enough. Windsor Castle is beautiful though. And technically both a castle and a palace (since the Queen lives there). And Westminster Abbey was amazing.
I hope you post the rest of the pages. I'm interested now.