Here’s a test painting for a recent illustration gig. Lately I’ve been playing with having large areas of black ink in my watercolors – it makes a nice graphic contrast that I can build the painting around. (Which artist was it that called black “the prince of colors”?)
And here’s a slight re-design of Micki from Smithson. I’m still playing with the features of most of the characters, trying to tighten up their designs. Micki looks a little angry here, but I kind of like her revamped hairstyle.
I had a grand day out on Saturday which included a trip to the paper counter at Pearl Art Supply, so here’s a new watercolor sketch to kick the tires. It’s Winsor & Newton hot-pressed 140lb., which may be my new fave paper. Shown here is Shaenon Garrity’s Helen Narbon, who has apparently forgotten that she left a Hot Pocket in her fusion-powered microwave oven. Well, either Dave or Artie will clean up the mess.
And here’s an earlier attempt at Helen, painted in gouache.
(It would take me too long to do 40 Helens, sorry …)
More watercolor doodling.
I just finished watching Solaris, or I should say, most of it. The original version, not the remake with George Clooney (although now I’m curious about that one …) I can’t resist the urge to say if 2001 was too fast-paced for you, you might like Solaris.
To be fair, it’s gorgeously filmed and has some nice sound design as well, but I can’t help feeling that about 45 minutes or so could have been edited out without much damage to the story (the running time is just shy of 3 hours). The beginning of the movie feels particularly leaden; it takes our hero Dr. Kelvin freaking forever to leave Earth for his business on the Solaris space station. About four times as long as was required to tell the backstory of the problems at the station, and set up Kelvin’s emotional state. Years ago I paged through Lem’s novel in the bookstore and it had Kelvin landing at the station on the first page, so this might have added to my feeling that things were dragging on-screen.
There are also many scenes where the camera pans lovingly over green landscapes, the roiling Solaris Ocean, and even a Breughel painting. It’s very pretty but after while your finger begins inching toward the fast-forward button on the remote …
A belated sketchblog entry for this week.
