Pencil in the sketchbook, from a photo in NYC.

I haven’t rigorously kept a sketchbook since high school/early college, but I’m trying again. This is a little spiral-bound watercolor one for these kinds of pattern/color/texture workouts. I’ve got a bigger one with lighter paper for other kinds of doodles.

Usually I just draw on whatever paper is to hand. But I figure with these sketchbooks as containers—of a certain size and a certain number of pages—I’ll be more likely to draw and paint every day in hopes of filling the #@^&*!! things up.

This is part 2 of my North by Northwest studies from 2001. Here I was trying to get a handle on how those late 50′s suits wrinkled. Also, Cary Grant is surprisingly slouchy for a sex symbol.

I was looking through my files and was startled to see these sketches are from 10 years ago. (I remember drawing these from a paused VHS tape. “What’s VHS, grandpa?”) Time flies when you’re running from murderous crop dusters. At the time I was doing some animation work, hence the running figure study.

Inspired by Eleanor Davis’ recent process post on her NYT illustration, I made some palettes and tried translating them from a glowing screen to pigment on paper. Didn’t work out quite like I wanted—I think I’d have to use gouache only to get those effects. But they’ll be good inspiration for later.

I’ve torn up a lot of my first attempt at Sweetened By-and-By, but had this test page lying around, and decided to mark it up as described by Santoro.

Weird. Looks like I got most of the action within the “dynamic” areas—the areas constrained by those two circles—and have some interesting tangents and alignments.

I like most of this page (though it’s going to be re-drawn again), but the fourth panel has always given me trouble (what’s shown here is a paste-down.) That panel’s not quite right somehow. Maybe these magic lines will help? I think that would be the real utility of this system – as a way of troubleshooting an existing composition.

Another attempt along the lines of Monday’s memory-painting. But again it turned into something else.

Watercolor and ink.