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1972

When he isn’t running his own animation Studio, my friend Steve publishes an excellent web magazine for animators called FLIP. Recently, for an up-coming article, he asked his animation friends for some of their childhood drawings. This sent me on a hunt for a pile of old, yellowed paper I knew I had some place…. Here are a few scans from that stash.

First, behold this epic battle-spread of German Knights VS English Knights. Gasp!

I’ve always drawn, for as long as I can remember, and these drawings here are certainly not my earliest (my toddler-scribbles are probably in a pile, along with those of all my siblings, collected by my Mother and hopefully still at my Dad’s house). These date from that period when I began to take an active interest in drawing, not simply doing it but also thinking about it; consciously trying to get “better” by understanding how other people did it. In my case, this fascination began in 1972, the year that I turned 8 years old.

The previous year, we had just moved to a new town. I often wonder if the period of alienation that followed inspired the escapism of drawing. But it is quite possible that this interest would have happened anyway. I had always loved animation and you can see some attempts to draw famous cartoon characters were there right from the very beginning. Though these few scribbles shown here are of famous DISNEY characters, the cartoons that played most often on TV were by WARNER BROTHERS and they were the ones that made me laugh the hardest and consequently got most of my attention.

I became even more fascinated by cartoons, beyond the fact that they made me laugh. I tried to figure out why the drawings were so good. “How come I can’t draw like that?” I have never understood why the inability to do something “well” was sometimes off-puting to me; leading to the abandonment of certain pursuits (mathematics, sport) whereas, my inability to draw was an obstacle to overcome and explore. Of course, this choice is unique to each individual. Other people (most, in fact) give up drawing to pursue other things.

Seeing this crude page of BIRD drawings (an attempt to draw the Warner Brothers CHICKEN HAWK so obsessed with Foghorn Leghorn) brings back a vivid memory of a frustrating day trying to draw BEAKS… “How do they make the beaks look so good in cartoons?” I still have a scrapbook of images cut from magazines that I would look at, from this period. Single-panel gag-cartoons, pages from Mad magazine and so on… Hilariously, around this time I also compiled a crude “portfolio” (using some left-over wallpaper from the renovation of our new house for the cover) because someone had told me that artists needed a portfolio. These drawings survive mainly because I had kept them in that binder.

A few years later, when my drawings began to improve, I became ashamed of these early scribblings and almost threw them out in a fit of self-consciousness. But I am glad now that I did not. I will post more from later years when I have scanned them.

Marin County

Here are some sketches from a trip a few weeks ago, up to Point Reyes and parts further North in Marin County. I should have done much more drawing on this two day outing but the fact is that the weather was so beautiful in Point Reyes that Julia and I spent all our time taking in the scenery on the first day of the trip. When I have been to Point Reyes before, most times it is either overcast or, if the sun is out, the landscape seems parched. This time however, there had been several weeks of rain prior to a spectacularly sunny day, so the land around the point was absolutely saturated with greenery.

Another major distraction from sitting and drawing was a spectacular parade of grey whales past the Point Reyes lighthouse. As each whale surfaced and spouted, there were great cheers from the assembled throngs of onlookers at the point. It was like a Whale Pride Parade. We heard that there was a record number of whales sighted that day. This was a happy accident for us; we had only planned to go draw. Everyone ELSE had planned to see whales, as we found out that it was the absolute height of migration season.

So, it seemed appropriate to bask in our good fortune that first day and enjoy the show put on by Mother Nature. So, drawing had to wait until day two. Possibly inspired by the vivid colours around me I tried a little watercolour on this sketch trip, which I don’t normally do.

The paper in the sketchbook is beautiful so i will try to move out of my comfort zone (which is line sketches in pencil and ink) and do more colour studies until I fill the book.

The Princess

Some quick photoshop tones over a pencil doodle. Needs more work but i will do that later.

Rough designs


Here are some rough designs from a few years ago. This project died pretty soon after the design process began, which happens to most projects I work on in development.

What was unusual (but may be the shape of things to come, unfortunately) was that the company went bankrupt before I had even finished the rough drawings.

A Pin-up Book(?)

For quite some time I’ve wanted to do a PIN-UP book full of heroines; characters that I like, from TV shows, comics or movies. Once, when I was about to get into that idea in earnest, I saw the just recently released BELLE du JOUR by Bill Presing (not to mention his follow-up BOOK PLATE BETTIES) and suddenly, I lost steam on the idea… not just because BILL is one of those despiring (depressingly inspiring) artists who make you want to break all of your pencils, one by one… but also because I realised that it would be hard to bring anything new to a book of cheesecake; there are hundreds of them already out there, and until I can think of something ELSE to bring to the idea it remains on my (now very crowded) back-burner.

Pondering that weighty issue doesn’t stop the doodles accruing in my doodle book, such as this page of of POWERGIRL scribbles.

Memory Reboot

In an attempt to purge my mind’s eye of images of the BEARDED SLAVE LEIA seen last weekend at Emerald City Comic Con, where he single handedly overwrote the adolescent memories of a thousands of nerds (including myself) here are some quick sketches of the LEIA I would prefer to remember, drawn through bleeding eyes.

Watercolour Sketch

This sketch shows a sculpture in a little park a few blocks from my apartment. I rarely sketch in watercolour but I should try more of these, because this particular sketchbook is made from watercolour paper…

Golden Gate Park Cypress

From a sketching trip to Golden Gate Park, late last year. This one was all done in brush pen, including a pen that had almost run out of juice (for the soft-focus background).

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