Summer is for Sketchbooks V

Here is an page of exercises from my sketchbook.


Brush Pen, Microns, Markers, Goauche
They started off as lettering exercises and eventually became about drawing in ways I'm not used to. When I was a kid I always refused to allow myself to copy from other images because I thought it was stealing or cheating or whatever, but this was a lot of fun and I feel like I can get away with it now because I've built up years of credit with my child-self. Or maybe it's because I've betrayed my child-self so much already as an adult it doesn't matter what I do now.

The exercise was a success in that I had fun drawing, but it was a failure in that I didn't really spend any time figuring out how most of these people draw. Whenever I draw my own comics I often spend a page or two of sketches playing with different tools and line-weights before I feel good about what I'm going to draw. And I think it would have been fun to do that with their styles, just to get a better idea of how they make their strokes. But with these I just dove right in with usually just a pen or brush-pen and tried my best to force their lines.

All the artists copied were chosen because their books were close to my desk (I think the Mickey Mouse is from a comic I read online somewhere).