It's croquis time again and this time with pencil. Every medium automatically makes you work differently.

Since I've been a bit lazy with my posting lately, I decided to make a one big post to keep this blog alive :) These three images are various sketchbook scans, old and more recent, compiled together.

I hope you find something of interest in them.

Shame on me...My posting has slowed down to a weekly basis. But I'll pick up the pace soon again! In the meantime, here's some croquis again. It really is dependent on the medium the way you draw, seems obvious but the way of thinking switches a bit. Here for example two are made with a brush and bigger areas of color when you automatically think more of shadow and pose. The one done with a pencil without shading is more about me trying to achieve movement and weight with just the line's width and direction.

Again some recent croquis. With these I started to go to into a bit more looser and stylized way. Could have been that I just had trouble concentrating enough...The one with the model in a crawling position was a tough one angle -wise and it also has a little gruesome feeling.

I dug out my old Rotring and Faber Castell technical pens. I used to draw with them a lot back in the day. It took some serious soaking in 80% alcohol to get these work again. I put some ink in them and drew. The FB gave out a diluted grey ink at first and R had more black. So this picture is the result of the doodling.

Sorry for the lack of posts! I've been an a vacation trip for a week. I really took a break also from drawing and almost from thinking of drawing. It felt weird but it's also kinda refreshing. So nothing really recent here. Another croquis from the previous session and some sketches related to the comic project which is in the docks at the moment...but hopefully not for long.

Italy 2002. These were some fun and small exercises for a course in illustration. They are basically meant as rhetorical images, examples on the various "tools" and means for communication through illustration. From left to right and from top to bottom, they translate or mean roughly: repetition, meta, "the part for all", "change of weight", periphrasis, "change of color", paradox, antithesis, ossomoro(couldn't translate that), similarity, hyperbola/excess.

I'm quite sure I didn't get them all spot on due to some difficulties in understanding but looking at them now I think I got most of them right :)

A couple of new croquis. Not the best of days but these qualified for a post, as if I would have a really tight criteria here ;)

It's 2002 Italy sketchbook again. We used to go into this same café always after school to drink some cappuccino and hang out for a moment. This drawing appeared into my sketchbook during one of those sessions.

Made some time ago a sketch that I liked and colored.

A few quick croquis from today. I went with some ink drawings too.

Sketchbook, Italy 2002.

Since I didn't hear any objections, I'm gonna continue with my "2002 Italy sketchbook" material, muahahahaa. This time there is actually a common factor in these pictures. They are all comics that got randomly created straight with a pen to the book. All of them seem to imply that this isn't the end (one has even page 1 marked in it) but...They also are not particularly well thought out. I just couldn't resist putting the penguin bit in since in recent years they have seemed to be the stock cute/funny character in animations etc. It's too bad I didn't make him do some kind of dance moves just that I could then have him killed. To put it straight the only great animated penguin I've seen was the one in the excellent Wallace&Gromit animation "The Wrong Trousers".

From the year 2002 same stuff as here. The gentleman on the top right is my teacher (not much of a caricature, I suck at them) from the history of italian illustration class. I can't remember his name just now. It was quite an experience when after a couple of months or so I just realized at some point in his class that I actually understood almost everything he said. I guess my italian just clicked on eventually. Before that I had just been smiling and nodding my head when my name was mentioned...

This is part of the same series of "comic's character art" as this.

Croquis time again! Not the best day today but these two came out ok. I tried a pen with a brush like tip on the second one. It feels nice but it's merciless. I think both are 5 minute poses.

The year is '05 again. These are just a couple of the sketches to a project still in hibernation.

Couple of pictures with quite different moods from '05 sketchbook.