Mark Harmon

I found three illustration board pieces that I'd cut up a while back and figured I'd make use of them.

Illustration board's not the most permanent medium (The paper on the Crescent 310 board I use is 100% cotton and acid free, but the gray-core board isn't quite so good.) but it works well for ink so that's what I use. I use a TON of water, and illustration board is the only surface that can handle it besides watercolor blocks. Clayboard would too, I suppose, but it's more expensive.

Crescent Premium watercolor board is the archival stuff: it has a white core. 

I took two scans. The first is about 1/3 of the way through, the 2nd is finished.

Mark himself is done in sepia ink. The background and shirt are black ink.

The wash method I use isn't exactly common. From what I understand, ink & wash was very popular earlier in the 1900s, but has become somewhat obscure these days. I recall reading about the technique in Rudy de Reyna's "How to Draw What You See" and thinking that it looked just dandy: thin ink with water and brush it on. How much more simple can it get?

The end result looks very much like a watercolor painting although it has very different characteristics:

• Ink thins with water but it sure doesn't lift like watercolor. Once a layer is dry, it's on for good unless you want to risk damaging the paper scrubbing.
• Ink handles a little differently. The vehicle for ink isn't gum arabic, so it behaves differently on wet paper. I can't describe it exactly, but if the paper is dry, it doesn't wander. It stays put exactly where you brush it. However, if there's a wet area nearby, you can count on that heavy ink you just laid down to go racing towards it and spread out. For fun, just wet a large area of paper and brush ink wildly throughout it. It spreads out in many interesting ways.
• It's very easy to layer ink. Since it dries waterproof, each layer goes on without disturbing anything else at all. This is an extremely useful property for tweaking gradients.
• As ink in a container dries, it thickens and becomes extremely easy to drybrush, much more so than watercolor. This is handy for adding texture to areas and doing hair, wrinkles, etc.

This is probably my favorite method of drawing. It's basically a western version of Sumi-e although I just use a cheap #6 white nylon brush, small script liner, and spotter. Drawing doesn't get much cheaper than that. I honestly believe even plain pencils would cost more in the long run.

I haven't seen it used much for portraiture but it works fine for me.

Comics with Kirk: pt. I

Here are some pages from a comic I've been working on for a few months. (Not much progress, huh?)

Only the bottom page is finished. It was adapted from a little drawing I did in my sketchbook while sitting at a cafeteria table.

Some commentary:

1st. Page: I can't come up with dialogue epic enough for that expression. I figure that as I get the rest of it done, it'll come to me. I don't even know where in the story it will fall. It was the first panel completed.

2nd. Page: Not sure whether or not to give the guy an afro or not. You can see that I penciled it in but it's one of those things I'll continue to sit on the fence about for quite some time.  The revolver was very hard to draw, it's an odd perspective. I used my Smith & Wesson model 10 for reference.

3rd Page: The rat has chewed through the cables. A running joke through the whole comic is that the couch is the only thing in color.

These things are hard to draw. I have no photo references so I have to just make stuff up and do a lot of studying.

Drawings 1

There will be many of these posts... I'll keep them numbered as "Drawings 1, 2, 3, etc." so they're easy to find. As I gain more experience, you'll also see paintings and the like.

I found a paper I particularly like. It's Strathmore 400 drawing paper: not specifically archival, but good paper and I figure it'll last a long time anyway. It's so cheap, I can't really find anything else that really compares for the price. I use a better paper for more in depth works, but this one works great for general purpose drawing.



You'll either recognize this woman or you won't. This graphite drawing took about 3 hours and is one that a lot of my friends really like for some reason. I've done better ones, but they still like this one. The lady herself is very aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion.

One of the things I'm liking about blogger is that I can post higher resolution images. Art is best viewed large, preferably from life but this will work fine.







Here's one I did of a friend. He's a good guy and easy to draw because he his head is so ellipsoidal... heh.
This is an ink and brush drawing. This is actually probably my favorite technique I've ever tried. It allows me to work very fast and still maintain a high level of detail. I use a #4 white nylon brush and india ink thinned with water for this technique. My personal preference is Higgins Black Magic. It goes a long way: this is actually probably cheaper than drawing with a pencil because so little ink is needed.

Many of my methods are based on cutting costs and spending less while maintaining a consistent quality of workmanship and materials. I feel you shouldn't have to break the bank to create art.