I drew a fish!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mzdial/8429357116/

I drew some fish. Recently, I’ve been working on learning how to work tonally with pens. It has been as hard and frustrating as I remember learning any new technique is, drawing things over and over , things not coming out like I wanted. The thing is, it’s especially annoying since I thought that I already knew how to do this.

Now, however , I think I am getting somewhere.
More coming later, no doubt.

While this technique isn’t directly applicable to my ultimate goal of tattooing, I figure that all the work I do improves my basic artistic skill, which will eventually make me better overall. All experience becomes useful eventually.

Dragon II

I have realised that I hate this image, now that I’ve seen it in a photo and have more objectivity. It looks goofy and cartoony, like some kind if bizarro gnome from a children’s book not gnarly and awesome as I think a dragon ought to, so I am unhappy.

I’ll press on anyway, and finish this rough, because that’s how we learn best, when trying to overcome mistakes. Maybe I can still use this as a way to practise with the markers.

Semi traditional Dragon Face in progress

Like I say to my dog quite often, “I always come back”.

Sometimes I leave you for a little while , but I always come back. So it is with blogging.

Today I am drawing the initial phases of a Pseudo-Japanese Traditional dragon, and I thought you might like to see what I’m up to as I do it, so the next few posts will be the process of doing the rough work.

ButterflEye

Lately I’ve been noticing a sad lack in my work of what I think of as ‘Dark Traditional’. So I decided to do something about that.

After the line work was done over the newly dried tinted paper, I used Indian Ink to wash in some gradated tones.

Then I added some vein-like structures on the wings to make them more interesting.

Finally I add ink droplets to the painting, which I’ve been looking forward to doing since I started to think about the image

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