2B

The gal at the sandwich shop forgot about the sandwich I ordered, so I had some extra time to draw at lunch today. Didn't bother me. My friend George and I have been drawing a lot during lunch breaks recently. Kinda feels like back in the art school days. George is one of these cats who if the option of a bigger table is available, will always choose to sit diagonally across the table. The killer crossover. Heads down, scribbling away before and after the food, a few words diagonally tossed back and forth. George is on a mission, and I'm trying to keep up. I've been quick sketching with pens a lot, because you can't second guess with a pen, once a line is down, its there for good. And so that helps me draw quickly.

Decided to switch things up today so I loaded my pencil up with some good ol 2B lead. This started as a quick sketch at lunch, then morphed into a train sketch, then I added to it some more at home after work. Here's what it looks like so far. You ever just stop and stare at your city? Namor in Atlantis.

pillar

ruins

When I'm working on something I'm enjoying, I'll have visuals just come to me. And if I don't get my ideas down on paper really quickly, in some form, they sometimes vanish. I liked the way this one was looking in my head, so I grabbed my brush and jotted it down in that same old sketchbook. Here's a quick sketch of Namor cruising above some ruins of ancient Atlantis.

roar

How would this sound underwater? I'm trying to approach these drawings in terms of shapes, and not really lines. I usually draw thinking of lines. Its how almost any drawing starts. And working as a traditional animator, you work almost completely with line drawings. I feel that drawings indicating blocks of light and shadow are stronger. And that's how I want to approach this. So I really have to unlearn a lot of what I am used to doing. This drawing is halfway there. But I still fell back on using lines to define some areas, as opposed to relying solely on shadow and light. And since there's no background, its hard to not throw in some outlines.

And yes, I think Namor will encounter a sea beast of some kind in this story. This was my second try at the beast. The first one looked more like a big carp. Started this on the train yesterday with a refillable brush, and then at home taped some other pages of my sketchbook to it and added the rest.