Western Washington University’s Viking Union Gallery had its walls covered with white paper recently for a “Drawing Jam,” and I finally had the chance to take some photos of it. The overall idea of the Jam was that anyone could contribute anything to the gallery. It was as much a gallery by the viewers as it was a gallery for the viewers.

During the opening night, the gallery hosted a Drawing Jam Reception, complete with food and plenty of drawing materials. I entered shortly after it opened and the walls were already showing signs of artistry.

I spent roughly an hour-and-a-half there (no watch, no cell phone, just some pencils and an eraser), working on a different kind of portrait than what I usually do. It was interesting to see what everyone else was creating, though I admit that I didn’t pay any attention until my own creation was complete. I also heard quite a few interesting conversations and some enjoyable music (The Meat Puppets, among others).

I opted to create an alien. Who doesn’t like aliens? If you were really paying attention, you may have noticed it in one of the previous photos. At that time, this photo would have shown nothing other than my drawing, so you can see how much art has been created since then, and how valuable the white space has become!

Every now and then, I have created a comic. Unfortunately, they pretty much all turn out bad because I have never settled on a particular style. My drawings go for as much realism as my skill will allow in most cases, but I have never liked comics that look like that, so I always struggle to find a good balance. Comics like XKCD and Cyanide and Happiness have shown that detailed art isn’t necessary, but if I just do stick figures, I will feel like a copycat at this point. I need to develop my own style, and I ought to do it soon. I have a couple dozen ideas waiting to be drawn.

I thought it would be a good idea to spend a while drawing in various styles to see where they would get me, if anywhere. One problem that I have continued to wrestle with is the digital vs. tradition question. If I do a drawing digitally, I can create it as vector art, which will scale to any possible size. That is a huge benefit later on for creating t-shirt designs, posters, etc. The obvious disadvantage is that I need a computer to create the art. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but what happens when I meet someone, start talking about the comics, and am asked to draw a sample? Suddenly the +2 cool points I would have earned turn into -2. So, the other option is traditional (i.e., drawing it on paper). In my opinion, this requires a bit more skill but has the advantage of spontaneity. It also requires a bit more up front planning because copying and pasting in real life is a pain…. A third option is to draw the comics on paper, scan them, fix the lines, do coloring, and add the text. This is a lot of work but combines the best of both worlds.

What have I decided? I really haven’t figured out anything at this point, but I have developed a deeper appreciation for comic artists who do spend that extra bit of time doing something more than stick figures, such as Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and Questionable Content. I think these two are a lot closer to the style I would like to develop than the previous two or the ones you typically see in a newspaper. The issue I have to worry about is spending so much time on the art that I don’t have fun with the actual humor that is supposed to get across.

Of course, then there’s always the question of whether each comic should completely stand alone or whether characters should recur…. Yeah, I have some work to do.

This a sailboat making its way through the fog as the photographer snaps a picture (and captures a bit of lens flare). It’s not based on a real photo.

I did the background many months ago and planned on continuing to layer it with islands and trees until it was very detailed, but I lost interest. During the whale watching trip I took recently, I saw a lot of sailboats and thought I should add one to the painting. The fog was just creative license. The lens flare is because I’ve been taking so many photos lately and I wanted to incorporate that joy (of photography, not of lens flare, haha) into a traditional medium. Having all the “interesting parts” to the left side creates a sort of tension that makes you almost expect a ship to come out of the fog on the right. Maybe I should have added some whales?

I had an idea for a painting (that would have been nothing like this) and was browsing Deviant Art for some additional ideas, when I came across a photo of a horse jumping. Besides the cool-factor in medieval times, I don’t think too much about horses, but the photo really caught my eye and I had to incorporate it into a painting.

My new idea for a painting ended up changing quite a few times as I worked on this. At first, the cloak was going to be tattered. Then I decided I was going to make the figure semi-transparent. After that, I changed my mind again and went with a more fog-like look. I wanted to remove much of the detail so that the viewer would piece it together himself/herself. Unfortunately, I removed a lot more of the detail than I intended, but it’s still fairly neat.

As always, my digital camera failed to capture the proper hue, contrast, etc. After level adjustment and lens correction in Photoshop, this is as close as I could get to the way it looks in person. For some reason this digital copy makes the rock stand out way too much and the mountains in the background are barely there. I think the horse also looks a bit more flat because the left hind leg is difficult to see.

I downplayed my tattoos by avoiding actual color (they are actually red text with black outlining) and using a pretty neutral brown. I also made them a bit smaller than in real life. The face isn’t very good. I had a lot of trouble with it, but I’m learning and slowly improving. At least it has an expression (that doesn’t match the reference photo, but oh well!). The painting also wraps around the edges of the canvas, so I couldn’t really capture that with the camera.

Overall, I am very pleased with the painting, even though the original photo is so much cooler and the painting obviously isn’t perfect. If you compare it to my first oil painting that I did about a year ago, you can certainly see a huge improvement (especially for having no guidance and only having painted a few paintings in that time). I might put the photo on here, but I haven’t decided. The title refers to the fact that I didn’t quite get it just right (you can semi-tell that it is supposed to be me), but the body is as true to life as I could get with my current skill level.