Doseybat

[compilerbitch]

A pen drawing of Doseybat I did while we were on holiday in Cornwall. I'd been meaning to scan it for ages, but kept forgetting to take my sketch book into the lab.

Since some people expressed shock that I might occasionally draw something that *didn't* include a Fluffy, I thought it might be good to include this one.

(There will be Fluffies later though, so don't worry...)

Comments

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Very nice. I particularly like the texture of her jumper.

The whole thing somehow looks like it ought to be a book illustration.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose it does look a bit like a lithograph. I scanned the image at 1200dpi, threshholded it so it was pure black & white with no half tones or antialiasing, then did a cubic resample down to the size here, so I suppose I've effectively done the equivalent of lithography digitally rather than by photographing the drawing onto line film.

I've always loved this look.

[tea-cantata.livejournal.com]

Lovely! D'you take commissions? (Payment probably in something like chocolate or baked goods or the like, though.)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

COMMISSIONS???

*gasps, staggers around for a bit, swoons theatrically*

I wouldn't regard myself as anywhere near good enough an artist to be able to accept commissions. I've done a lot of typography and graphic design, so I know a lot of tricks that let me fake it and 'look professional'. But there are many people on my flist (and probably yours too!) who are both more talented and deserving than me.

[791-43.livejournal.com]

:-)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

:-D

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

ack! is today the pictures-of-me festival or something?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, December 14th. Official International Pictures-of-Bat day. You mean you forgot?!?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Yay! Brightens up the place.

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

*frowns in a threatening way*
fancy Oakdale arms tomorrow? im bringing Lucy in a desparate attempt to prove to Steve I am capable of winning at pool, it should be quite comical.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I'll be at Dorkbot but will try to get to the Oakdale arms by 9:00 PM.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

OK, you should find us there when you arrive. Bat & Lucy will be arriving about 8, I will probably be a bit sooner than that.

[yvesilena.livejournal.com]

This rather puts paid to your claims of not being able to draw. :P

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I still wouldn't really regard myself as good at it, though. This is actually my first attempt in recent years at drawing a real, live human, so I'm far fram practiced at this kind of thing.

I think I just have a few graphic design tricks that I use a lot that make my drawings and cartoons look 'professional', whatever that means.

[galliana.livejournal.com]

It's a really nice drawing, but I think you should have given Bat a larger ass.

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

The drawing is lovely, and verges on the far too sweet for its own good...

[jmtkalcich.livejournal.com]

awesome. I like it.

You mention tricks. Aren't tricks the whole point of art. Using a little magic to make your picture look nice.

[chard.livejournal.com]

Nice rendering! What materials did you use?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

It's quite thick, good quality art paper with a calendared finish. Nothing special, just a cheap sketchbook really. I roughed it out very lightly with an 0.5mm propelling pencil, then used a selection of fibre tip technical drawing pens of various line thicknesses (0.8mm, 0.5mm, 0.2mm, 0.1mm, 0.05mm) to ink in the detail. I tend to use 0.8 for external edges, then thinner pens for progressively more internal edges down to a limit of about 0.2mm. All the shading, hair detail and cloth patterns were done with the 0.05mm pen.

I used my usual trick for preparing line art for the web, which was to scan it at high resolution (usually about 800dpi), threshhold it to get rid of any traces of paper texture or unerased pencil remnants and to make the blacks as solid as possible, cubic resample down to the final size, then a sharpen filter tweaked so the edges don't look soft, but aren't quite jagged either.

[chard.livejournal.com]

… used my usual trick for preparing line art for the web …

Yes, that's what I do with things like . More recently I've been experimenting with directly drawing in Photoshop, to produce things like . Have you tried that? What do you make of it?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

They are both lovely drawings.

I have tried drawing with a graphics tablet, but never really got away with it. I tend to find that I like to use vector packages like Xara for technical illustration, and/or 3D packages like Lightwave for more heavy duty purposes, but I have a liking for ordinary pen and paper too.

Your photoshop drawing is interesting -- it has something about it that is difficult to pin down. It's definitely a drawing, but it doesn't look quite like pen. Very nice.