Inktober 52 - 2021 26
Drawing concepts like "Soar" and "Travel" tends to turn into a bit of a free-association game for me. Since I wasn't going to draw another bird after last week, I decided to stick with people on this one, and since I was going to draw people, I took the opportunity to do some character design while I was at it. For some context, I do some creative writing in my free time (who would've thought), and that does involve creating a number of characters, most of which I don't have actual visuals (or a comprehensive physical description) for. I thought about changing that every now and then, but haven't really been satisfied with the results. However, I've never been the type to get discouraged by decisive failures, so here we go again.
I don't feel too comfortable in sharing my writing, so I won't, at least not yet. Suffice it to say that the figure to the left and in the center of the sketch already have a comprehensive description littered throughout the work, hence why they were pretty easy to pencil in. The one on the right is relatively new and doesn't yet. They're also not technically characters that would travel a lot, now that I think about it. I just tend to default to starting with them, because I like the design.
Since I had decided to have three characters on the paper this time, I did also have to do a stickman sketch in a corner to figure out what to do with the limbs and such. I should probably have included that, just to underline how few things my mind can simultaneously picture. Either way, I stuck with that sketch and did the figure studies thing, then added details. Normally I would have stopped there, because erasing the undersketch is tedious and I don't like it, but now I have fineliners!
Yeah, so two things: My hand didn't really follow the line I had pictured for the right person's jawline, so it looks a little off. Also, the eyes didn't really work out as I intended. I've had issues with eyes in general, now that soft shading isn't a thing anymore with my toolset. Ordinarily I would have soft-shaded it with the side of the pencil, but with ink that technique clearly doesn't translate very well. The way I do it now tends to give a weird reverse-ringlight effect that looks unsettling, but not as unsettling as the black sclera and white pupil effect I ended up with here! I'll have to look for an alternative, considering I am probably going to draw the occasional person.
I added a bit of background, so the characters aren't floating in the void. It's loosely based on memories of an airport. I'm not sure how many terminals an airport has and I'm pretty sure that's not how they're pointed out on signs, but I wasn't going to look up reference for that.
The character on the right got a little more detail and a few minor corrections, because I would've felt bad otherwise. I'm not too happy with the proportions on that one, but that's the first iteration, so that's permissive, I suppose. He's probably going to get a few makeovers as time goes on. No shading this week, I still don't have a marker and I'm not going to use a fineliner for shading. I'm persistent, not a masochist. Maybe the next human will be somewhere between the close-up and this somewhat undetailed depiction. I should also take care with the ink smears. Those really got away from me on this one.
Set by increments of seconds,
dotted lines worm across the map.
The destination modestly beckons
anticipations quickly entrap,
the plans for the times that will follow,
in a short daze of time allocation
so it'll be worth the effort to swallow
the trek through the appropriate station,
by foot, by car, by plane or by boat
but sometimes appears the fun explanation
the journey is the destination