And this one is almost smiling. Okay, full smile in the next drawing, I promise.

More with the Art Rage

Sliding this in for Illustration Friday, just under the wire. Another Art Rage and Wacom joint.

New toy!

Out strolling through the sketchblogs, I kept hearing tell of Art Rage. I downloaded the FREE version (ahem, PhotoShop), plugged in the Wacom and had at it.

Basically, it’s a stripped down drawring app focused on real-life media. Paint mixes like paint, chalk smudges like chalk, etc. No layers, no text, no distorting, no filters.

I’ve been using it like a grown-up magna doodle, mainly — drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing. But I saved some early efforts.

Thanks, Internet!

I got them pencil sketches, them pencil sketches for the young ones.

The results of my TV time doodling over the weekend:

An ugly baby:

A helmet lady:

An ol’ baldy:

A handsome woman:

A guy with a big nose and weird hair:

A space dude:

And finally, a fish:

I’ll gussy some of these up in PhotoShop later.

I think I’ll try some more fish. I’ve never been a big fish guy, but I really, really like the fish that Kennon James has been doing on his blog (discovered through Drawn). Looking through his huge collection o’ awesome fish in profile, and giving it a quick try myself, I completely see the appeal. They have a standard form, like sonnets or limericks — each has to meet certain constraints, but the constraints lend themselves to infinite variation. You just need a mouth, an eye, a dorsal fin, a pectoral fin and a tail. The rest is coming up with harmonius shapes. (Though now I’m noting that there should actually be TWO pectoral fins and an anal fin.) I like that you can come up with animals that have never existed but are instantly identifiable and plausible.

Here’s a colored pencil sketch straight from the sketchbook, with no Wacom tomfoolery.

I tend to draw a lot of these — roboty things with human heads, scuttling about.

This is another pen sketch gussied up in PhotoShop with a Wacom tablet.

Not #1 as in the first I’ve drawn, but as in the first on this here blog.

Sometimes I get stuck on something, and I’ve been stuck on drawing people in helmets for a decade or so. This one started as a pen sketch, and I finished it in PhotoShop with a Wacom tablet.

Welcome to the Mr. Harris sketchblog. I’ve tapped PartyBot here to kick things off.

Like many of the drawrings to come, this is a collaboration between common era Mr. Harris and Mr. Harris of the past. I sketched this in pencil in late 1999. In 2006, I scanned it and had at it in PhotoShop, using a Wacom tablet.

Self critique: I need to make my outlines more uniform (consistent thickness), and I need to add shading to things like this.