Inking under fire

» Written on April 29, 2008 at 11:36 PM «

Is not a situation that most artists would imagine, let alone dream of even experiencing. As I type these mere strings of text, know that such a situation has transpired, of sorts. More importantly, it is actually survivable, proof of which now resides to the left of this post.

Unless, of course, you’re actually reading the RSS feed, in which case I kindly suggest you read the unabated version instead.

The obvious content of this post, therefore, outlines my adventures with traditional inking techniques, all done while under the watchful eyes of prowling sarges, warrant officers and even left-enants.

It’s rather exhilarating, really. With every stroke of that Pilot micron pen comes a quick, furtive look up and around, checking-six (hell, all the numbers of the clock) just to make sure the next thing I’m inking won’t be a slip accepting 7 days’ worth of extra duty for skiving on duties vast.

At the moment, I’m using a 0.2 Pilot (The Sakura ones cost a lot more) for my rugged inking, as I fear my 0.1 will probably find itself snapped while I feebly struggle with its intricacies on the bus or train. Pay no attention to the character in the picture; merely the quality of the lines as I begin to weave a series of plot holes surrounding his creation.

I also did a little something else.

His right arm is a little out of position, I realize rather belatedly, but whatever. It felt pretty good doing something that didn’t involve keys, log books, APCs or the fucking goddamned Army in general. Especially when the subject content still involves something that I’d love to perform on certain characters in reality.

Experimenting with a certain inking technique that seems to be called ‘feathering’ has certainly proved interesting. Earlier on, I had worried about my protagonist’s clothing appearing rather plain and bare; after all, how do you make a gi look like anything other than a shameful cover for your lack of knowledge in reproducing human anatomy accurately?

Instead, I used the folds of the clothing and shading using more explicit forms of feathering to (hopefully) bring more texture into the apparel itself, allowing the actual folds of the cloth to be a design all of its own accord. In this case, while it’s rather rough in some areas and completely off in others, I think I’ve learned something here.

On a whim, I lent the sketchbook to a friend who’s also posted at my camp, but assigned to a different unit. He was feeling immensely bored, and I encouraged him to see what he could come up with, as I know he had a certain flair for technical drawings. I see he hasn’t changed much.

I realize this update seems rather sporadic and completely non-canonical, but I really wanted to get the inked stuff uploaded before I totally forgot about it. Rest assured: I’ll post more about how life sucks in general in a later update, with extra whining thrown in for free.

That’s the best deal in town, folks.

   

Search

Extended Life

On the tubes

Archives

By date

By category

View all