Handmade Sketch/Book

March (part two) and starting a new sketchbook.

Hello there! Welcome to “Fishing with John” the blog not about fishing from a guy not named John.

Last post, I promise to provide something a little more substantial, and I’m happy to say I’m ready to deliver! I have some nice little sketches from a few different sessions, and I’m pretty pleased with how most of them came out. I did something a little different for each session because it’s important to not get stuck in ruts doing everything the same all the time. However, they were all traditionally hand-drawn in my new hand-made sketchbook.

Starting off, I do have a little video of the new sketchbook, which I made to go with a fancy sketchbook cover my wife got me for Christmas:

The first set of gestures I have for you are from video session number 646 from croquis.cafe (all the *human* figure sessions of this post are from there.) The first two pages are one, and two minute poses, and the third page is untimed (at least thirtyish minutes.) I decided to go for a more stylized approach with that one, balancing between delicate shading and bold lines.

Don’t pay attention to the magical stool that disappears behind her head… ^___^

Next up is a session I did using croquis cafe’s “fast sketch” photo shuffling tool. Here I re-introduced a practice I did years back in a previous sketchbook; where I layered my drawings with different colored pencils to conserve paper/not have oodles and oodles of pages with scribbles of less than a minute. The last pose was pretty complex, so I drew it three times. The first time, I started with a red pencil, wire under-drawing and switched to graphite for the line work/shading. On the second version, I wanted to push my line work and focused on line economy. For the last version I only used the previous two drawings for reference to make a bold, stylized, open line ink sketch. Looking back, all three of them are a little too wide in the torso, but body twists and foreshortening are tricky things - even for someone who has been doing this as long as I have.

I thought about fixing this digitally. And I still might. But one thing about traditional work is sometimes it’s better to just let it be; without the control Z.

From video 648, I did another layered session, except this time I placed all three pose lengths on the same page: one, two, and five minutes with red, graphite, and ink - respectively. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something fun and expressive about picking the forms out of the visual noise and letting them get lost simultaneously.

I’m pretty sure I spent an extra two-five minutes on details and hatching.

Next up, I have some cat gestures. It’s been a while since I’ve done animals. I’ve got a pet commission I am working on so I’m working towards getting familiar with the shapes again and expressing character.

And finally, for the last day of the month, I had a session from video session 649, working with an old carpenter pencil I found on the side of the road. I spent a few extra minutes on the last one, which was probably closer to 15ish minutes.

It’s a bit tricky for fine details, and not particularly dark, but a carpenter pencil is great for switching between expressive lines and flat shading.

That’s it from the month of March! I’ll catch you later mid-April, but in the meantime, you can check out my comics on my other newsletter, Cardboard and Coffee.

As always, thanks for fishing with John!

-Calvin