Airborn

[tealin]

I just finished Airborn, Kenneth Oppel's first book after his Silverwing trilogy. It's got airships and pirates and swashbuckling good times ... and apparently a reluctance to give up flying mammals, but who can begrudge him that? Anyway, it was fun, so I drew stuff:


Main character, Matt Cruse, looking kind of bland, but that's more or less how he looked in my head ... and this is why I'm not a design star. I also don't have any good early-20th-century uniform reference when my computer is turned off. Note to self: visit used book store next week. Because what I need is more books!

Kate de Vries, leading lady, who makes me wonder about Mr Oppel's wife because she's very much like Marina in Silverwing. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm majorly ripping off some Jane concept art but it turned out nice anyway! Yay me! (No telling how many really awful sketches came before this one...) There's a girl at work whose 'look' I want to capture for her...

Szpirglas, the pirate captain. After overcoming my tendency to picture him as Reacher Gilt, I realized I could base him off a family friend who fits the description rather well, but these were drawn before the realization, and I'm not sure I have any reference pictures. Doesn't look very captainly here, or very piratey for that matter... sigh.

A thumbnail for the scene where they're offloading rubber hosing ... it looks cool in my head, trust me. Mostly dependent on colour, though. The composition needs a little finessing before I go that far.

Matt, doing some swashbuckling...

The book is punctuated with occasional dream sequences in which Matt is flying, so I brought in a bit of the climax and stuck him with a flock of cloud cats ... apparently I can't get over Silverwing either.

Now for the moaning: Every day at work I draw what I would consider decent drawings. Admittedly, they're mostly poses in rotations, but they're solid and confident. I've even taken to doing rotations on paper instead of the Cintiq to keep me in touch with a pencil (and also because it's faster... and better). I get home, though, and open my sketchbook with pencil in hand, and what comes out looks and feels like the stuff I forcibly excreted in the midst of my rough storyboard-induced drawing decay period last summer. What do I need to change? I've been out drawing observational stuff more than ever this year but that hasn't seemed to have helped, it just seems to have made me impatient with my drawings so they're all really haphazard and gestural and I don't bother to get things right. Urh.

Comments

[anathelen.livejournal.com]

I had a friend complain to me last night that after doing magazine layouts all day she was bereft of inspiration for her comic when she came home from work. I was unable to suggest anything but watching/reading/listening to something that she really liked and inspired her creativity. I believe she hooked herself up to the Pratchett I.V. drip. I've no idea if that approach addresses your problem, though.

Your drawings make my me want to grab a pencil and draw, because you make it look so easy!