Brian Moore's Sketchblog

Finally gave up on this one. It's a color version of an ink drawing I made earlier. Gouache on cardstock.

I've found that generally when I'm not happy with a painting, it's because I didn't get enough color variety into it. Sometimes it means I just need to buy a larger variety of paints. I bought what seemed like a ton of watercolors before I felt like I had a palette with enough range. I'm working with a smaller set of gouache colors, so maybe I should expand that.

I also didn't think quite hard enough about the color before forging ahead with this one. Gouache is more forgiving than watercolor - you can really slop it on - but it also gets muddy hella quick if you don't have a goal in mind. Well, the next painting will be better.

Some wacky characters I drew as a warm-up to working on the last Smithson strip.

I love the crackle effect that watercolors make on plain old copy paper. It's really freeing to paint on non-expensive paper, too.

More playing with watercolors on cheap paper.

Logged a few more hours on the Quest for The Ideal Paper over the weekend, trying out everything I had on hand in the studio: plain typing paper, Bristol, card stock, Arches (that is, the Good, Expensive Stuff) ... At some point I found a cache of sample packs of watercolor paper, that I had completely forgotten about.

This page is all on Arches 140 lb. "En-Tout-Cas" ("All-Purpose"). Nice stuff.

I'm sorry to have missed MOCCA this year - it sounds like it's packed with cool events and attending artists. Maybe next year ...

Meta: According to Movable Type, this is the 100th entry on this blog. Hooray for persistence.

A belated sketchblog entry for this week.

Sorry for the lack of activity here for the past month. I spent some weeks preparing for, and then experiencing, a long-needed vacation (during which I got to see some old episodes of WKRP, thus the title ...)

My primary destination was San Francisco - a great town and home to many fine cartoonists. And while I was there I managed to pick up a new toy, the Kuritake Brush Pen:

I think I like it. It takes a little more finesse than the firmer brushes I'm used to, but it's great to just draw and draw without dipping into the ink and re-shaping the point.

I hope to share more art from my webcomic Unintentional soon. All the doodles I have now would basically be spoilers.

Some doodling with my new toy, a Kuretake brush pen. Yeah, I could get used to this. It's really smooth.

Panel sketches for this week's Smithson, buttressed by a few doodles.

A doodle that emerged while I was warming up for last week's Smithson.

This is the second time I've painted these scenes - I've been trying to get the color and light where I want it. I feel like these are closer than the first version. Nice saturated gouache. Since I'm concentrating on the painting more than the drawing, they're a little sketchy (that's a toy robot that the kid is holding in the top painting.)

The Holidaze Are Upon Us and the work is piling up, so here's a painting from the archives. This was my idea for a mascot/logo for the proposed webcomics anthology site, Rocket Pirates. (Smithson was slated to be part of the initial RP lineup.)

I don't dig the squidgy paint - this was an early effort in gouache - but I do dig the eyepatch-and-cyborg-eye combo. I have no idea where the rocket in the eye idea came from.

New doodles.

First cold of the season.

Sounds like an undiscovered Captain Beefheart or Guided by Voices track.

What my days have been like lately.