THE SIMPSONS NEWS

This week, I managed to finish my Act 3 revisions in two days.  This has given me three days to work on a very elaborate Couch Gag for the rest of the week.  The living room gets very crowded in it.  Thankfully my Act 3 assignment wasn’t too involved.

ART

I’m still trying to figure out how to best approach finishing my wife’s book cover.  It’s getting more and more frustrating. I thought that by doing some experimenting and testing out different approaches, I’d come closer to figuring out what I wanted.  If anything, it’s made me more confused and frustrated.

One thing I DO know I want, I DON’T want the final look of the cover to look “cartoony”. I want it to be more on the “photo real” side than the comic book drawing side.  Trying to find the best way to go about doing this has been a pain in the neck.  Especially since I don’t know how to paint.

So here’s what I did. Since last time when I used markers on tracing paper and it didn’t go well.  I thought I’d try it on regular white paper with a little bit of black ink and marker.  This is the result:

The result was not what I wanted. It was ugly and sloppy.  I made the mistake with the first drawing of painting over my original pencil drawing so I re-drew it and then made photocopies to paint.

I tried again using a different approach and taking what I learned from the first try to try something new.  This time I tried rendering interior shadow values with Prismacolor black pencil while using the marker simply as local color:

I don’t think it worked. It still looks too cartoony. It’s not as sloppy but it doesn’t look very “photo real” either.  I also don’t think the values quite work in the face. I came to the realization that I think I’ve been drawing the shadow and light shapes on the nose wrong too.

Just to change things up I  decided to try an ink wash, experimenting with the shadow shapes of the nose:

Again, like my first attempt with the markers, it turned out sloppy and ugly.  Not what I wanted.  Also, unlike this scanned version, the original was more Warm Grey than Neutral Grey. Also, the blacks didn’t seem black enough for me.  I might try again with the wash but I decided to give the markers another go.

I decided to go all out with the next one. I was going to render the heck out the drawing, trying to incorporate every value I saw in photo I’m using for reference. I decided that I was going to use a little bit of ink around the eyes but the rest I would do completely in marker (with a touch white Prismacolor pencil in places):

I was very proud of it when I was done. This lasted for about a day. When I saw it the next day, I saw I had failed again.  It STILL looks cartoony and worse yet, muddy and overworked.  It’s not an elegant painting by any means and it looks amateurish to me.

This has all added up to making me frustrated. I’m not quite sure what to do.  So I’ve decided to ask my drawing “Sifu” Paul Wee for help.  He’s always good at guiding me when I need it.  He’s also offered to help out if I needed it after he learned about that I was doing.

I’ll let you know what happens next week.

ART/WEBSITE

And speaking of my friend and “Sifu”  Paul Wee, here’s a recent article of Paul written in The Burbank Leader:

CLICK HERE to read it.

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.

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