Another tryout

I did this political cartoon for an editorial cartoon -competition a while ago here in Finland. It didn't receive any accolades. I was a bit lost when once again I really started working on some pictures for this only a few days before the deadline. I hadn't really found a suitable style and all three that I did ended up looking a bit different from each other. I think I also raised my standard too high in the sense that I looked for inspiration and level of thought and execution from Quino :)
They really would have had more feeling to them if I had developed a bit more on the style but would also have avoided overwriting ideas into one image.
I was the most content with this one, it has an international subject matter and no need for translation. But is it funny? Not in particular. I wanted it have more a satirical slap in the face -feel and criticism on the policies of particular countries.

Crestock tryout

As these things usually go, I decided to start doing an entry for a competition the night before the deadline. Quick and dirty then.

The idea in the (annual) Crestock Photoshop competition was to make an apocalyptic christmas "card" based on the given stock images. I went for a kind of an animated short -feel on the characters here.

One irritating thing was that it seems my monitor at home shows colours a bit too dark, especially in the red area. I realized this when I checked the image on the monitor at my work place. It looked like crap. I did a couple of quick fixes and sent it off.

I'm just happy that I did something. Makes me want to do more digital painting again.

You can check it out here and cast a vote if you like it and want to go through the trouble of registering :)
http://www.crestock.com/blog/photoshop/contest2008/entry.aspx?id=8678

There's this one image that I feel is a sure winner. It has a good consistent style, conceived with care and a refreshingly not so bleak take on the subject:
http://www.crestock.com/blog/photoshop/contest2008/entry.aspx?id=8542

Damn those lifedrawings

Croquis for a change (sorry Kaltsu ;). I tried to loosen a bit but these did end up looking a bit...hmm..stiff? (The model is alive and well of course).

Burlesques Muertos

I went to the Dr Sketchy's again last night. The theme for this time was Dia De Los Muertos. So this time it was more on the mexican macabre than on erotic tease :) The models were posing as a dead married couple with masks and heavy make-up.

I found out that drawing people with clothes on is actually much harder than drawing a nude model. I was also sitting at a not-so-good angle so I relied more on the feel, theme and stylization instead of "model drawing".

These were pretty fast poses of 5-10 mins but I did put in some gray values afterwards. The fast sketch I did when the couple was dancing their last dance...

Lifedrawing Tonic...

for this blog. I ought to name this blog "Janne's nudes" but what the hell these lifedrawing keep this thing alive at least and my nudes wouldn't atract a crowd of any kind.
I try to start the at LEAST one post per week pace (better if more).

So a couple of fast nudies here, enjoy.

Cintiq doodle 2

Sheesh, I had the Cintiq on my desk for two weeks at work but other things that really didn't require it's use, came in the way. So when I actually doodled something this is the other one that came out of it...a semi-nude girl. As far as subject matter goes it can't get better than that.

Stiffdrawing

As the autumn progresses here in Finland, also the lifedrawing classes continue. So I'm back with some of those. The break has done it's bit. My drawing felt really stiff and I only started to get the hang of it only at the very end of the session.

So here's a couple of those.

Cintiq doodle

OMG a post! Yes it's been a while since my last outing here. Nothing extra special this time but I did get to make my first marks with a Wacom Cintiq. It's not my own (although I started to think about it...). They got a couple of the 12" versions at work now and I tried it out.
It wasn't that great at first. The feel of the pen or the offset between the pen's point and "canvas" with the screen material in between kind of annoyed me at first.
But here's my first ever quick doodle with a cintiq anyway!

Nightly Burlesque

Helsinki Festival's large event, the traditional Night of the Arts was held again last friday. Among the night's numerous events was the Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, organized again by the Burlesque Festival of Helsinki.
Thankfully I did find the time to pop in to do some drinking and drawing again. This time it was special because the founder of Dr. Sketchy's, Molly Crabapple was there to give a presentation about the phenomenon and her art. Then she performed for a packed class of artists a great show, celebrating Weimar Berlin. Boy, was she something ;)
Here's now a couple of my drawings again. Molly picked her favorites from a female and a male artist. I was pretty much in the front row of a packed room where it was hard for her to navigate so she didn't probably see the really good ones in the back and so instead, she picked mine! She also signed it for me. Which was nice.
The one she picked was actually my favourite too 'cause I did it in the start of the show, when she was dancing and moving. I didn't pay attention for the likeness but I think I did catch some feel of the elegance and movement. The others here were drawn from a still pose and because I had more time on my hands I tended to start overdoing them. Too much thinking will only slow you down!

Machine Bliss

This is actually a kind of a new thing in this blog. The normal stuff that I've thrown around has been doodles, old stuff etc.

Picture's name is "Tollous" which translates roughly "stupidness of a jolly kind" :) I did it as an entry to a competition where the brief was to illustrate a poem by Arja Tiainen. The title was "Rakkaus koneisiin" = "The Love for Machines". I went the feeling route on illustrating it to avoid the word to word -type of illustration. It's still in the same universe as the poem :)

I didn't win any prizes but I was happy the get something done for a change and I got to be part of the classy exhibition surrounding the competition. The exhibition is open at the Art Museum of Mikkeli until the 21st of October so if you happen to be near the city, I recommend that you check it out.

Sketchville

I think I'm getting back up to speed with this blog, at least in terms of publishing frequency (quality is another matter).

Well here is at least one Dark Knight -inspired doodle (excellent movie!) and with that Eeyore goes together nicely. The doodle about Eeyore came about when I watched a couple of episodes of soviet produced Winnie The Poohs. The design of Eeyore was way more appaling then the Disney one. This doodle is something of a cross breed of those two donkeys...

(Now that I look at the two doodles at the bottom-left corner, they remind me of a scifi-version of the Hunchback Of Notre Dame.)

Sketch Becomes Her

Yup, just a bunch of stuff to keep the blog-machina happy.

A Painting That Never Was

A sketch that's already a few years old that I did during a boring moment at work. It's been lying around in my hard drive and hoping to be developed further to a painting of an 80's game cover with proper typography.

Now I just thought, nah...I'm gonna do a new one for that and let this one be just a sketch 'cause I think it's OK that way.

Speaking of painting, I've been digging up my old acrylics to begin on a commission painting to a friend. I've been going around and around on startin but I've got nowhere. I really don't know why. But it seems at the moment that my painting skills are as dry as were a few of the paint tubes...

Boat doodle

We went for the weekend to do some sailing in the archipelago of Finland. I originally intended to do a lot more drawing but this sketch of a boathouse in the beautiful island of Gullkrona was the only decent enough. To be posted here that is...

Doodle The Right Thing

I got back today from the rock festival in Werchter, Belgium.

Once again, great. It really was something to finally see Radiohead live, I wasn't disappointed, far from it. Great gigs also from The Raconteurs, charismatic Neil Young, R.E.M., Mika, Beck, MGMT, Sigur Rós and Band Of Horses.

These doodles I made into my bag (a continued tradition then!) during Anouk's gig...since there really wasn't anything else to do..

Black&white doodles can't jump!

Well this is a post just to show that yes, the blog still exists. Random sketchpages, what else!

And tomorrow we're of to Werchter, Belgium, rökkenröyyyl"! Radiohead, yes...

Invasion of the Burlesque lifedrawings

Again drawing people in cool costumes. Some were done while the models were on the move, some on a pose and the group pose had 15min of time.

Twice Upon A Sketchbook

Yep, there's more where these came from!

Doodoos

Doodles...at least! The one with the happy man in the puddle of blood I draw on this A4 sheet of paper that I tape on top of my Wacom at work to make it less slippery (it's intuos2, no matte surfaces yet). Anyways, the paer does get quite dirty after a while and this one had this nice grey gradient on it so I didn't want to just throw it away. I'm not sure if I was having a bad day but the guts just spilled out...
The one with the jungle boy, I did during some meeting, again without much thought to it but it does present an idea that should I do a fantasy/adventure comic in that direction. I'm not sure if I would do it with blue and red pencils allthough I like the visual feel to them.
EDIT: Did'n want to make a new post with these but I added some really fast doodles that I did with Illustrator. I really haven't done much with vectors after school but I enjoyed drawing these with the wacom and didn't overly noodle with 'em. Gotta look into the software more in the future. Ok, I admit it! Any cheeky monkey can do nice flowing lines with a vector software!

Burlesquefast!

Despite some opposing comments (silence! I rule this part of the internet :), I'm gonna post some more lifedrawings...
These are again from Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art school drawing session. The models from Sweden were awesome (figures) but I still didn't get anything proper down to the paper from the longer poses but I kinda liked these ones that I did while one of the models was moving and doing a dance. Reminds me of my animation fandom and how I should make some of that soon...

Sketchbook scavenger!

I started thinking that why I keep on posting seemingly pointless sketchbook drawings? Probably because I enjoy looking at the rough sketches from others, maybe even more than finished pictures.

But! In fact there's a pic here that has actually gone through minor phoshop tweak (aside from the usual levels and stuff). The one with the guy leaning against a tree, I did again straight on doodle -style with two different color felt pens. After scanning them in I wanted to smooth the surface of the green color but I ended up with a look that resembled a bit that of a lino cut print.

The chef pic is the scan of a gift card for a gourmet lunch that I gave as a present to my girlfriend. On the others, it seems that I was in an animal mood :)

Lifedrawing - The New Batch

I guess I should rename my blog to "Happy Croquis" since it seems to be only stuff that I post these days...
It will get better at some point! (Did I say that aloud?)

Anyways, here's some new lifedrawings :)

Burlesque lifedrawing rings twice

Another session of the wonderful Dr. Sketchy's burlesque lifedrawing was held. Likeness is again something that is off in almost all of these.
I personally like best the small single black and white one. It was drawn while the model was moving and performing as most of the non-colored.

SketchMan

No explaining to do here.

No Country For Old Doodles

Again I start to wonder if posting my various doodles and drawings is pointless or lacks focus. Then I think that no, it's not pointless. It keeps me doing stuff at least with some pace.

And after all, there might be at least one person who likes what I draw...Hi mom!

These are collected doodles and lifedrawings. With the latter I once again tried to bend my mind in a little bit different drawing style. The change of technique obviously helps and forces to draw different- looking lines. Also there's the usual ink stuff...

A Lifedrawing Too Far

Hello hello,

it sure has been quiet aroud here. Last week I was on my winter vacation and we went skiing in the italian alps. That was great and my bones are still intact so that's not much of an excuse for the lack of updates...Actually during the holiday I didn't draw at all not even a line. So I guess that's why they call it holiday...

Here's at least one lifedrawing though (surprise surprise)! I've been doing some pretty fun stuff at work lately and it's too bad that I can't post any of that stuff here.

My Left Lifedrawing

This time around I tried again to draw in a slightly different way than usually. The change of techniques is obvious but I also tried to force my hand to move the pen differently almost every time. The time available certainly varied from 15/10 minutes in the gray ones and 5 min in the rest. My "style" is of course visible still but in some of these I think I succeeded. The model is the same in every drawing but her slender look is really portrayed only in couple of these.

My favorites are the ones with the green tint. I think they have a certain playfulness and almost a flirting quality at least when juxtaposed with each other.