Pulpish Mae West

I always been attracted to old master from the impressionist era, but i'm getting more and more attracted to the american illustrators of the 40's to 60's. Like Robert McGinnis or Mitchell Hooks. They were giants in the business of mystery books. I wouldnt be surprised if Sienkewicz or Ashley Wood were both inspired by these two. Especially Hooks, with his more graphic style. So I was fooling around in my studio. Nujabes was playing loud, and I decided to try something in that genre. I used a black and white photo of Mae West as reference.Now i need a bold super long cheesy title, like... "Don't wait for me, i'll be dead by then." or "Kiss me twice then die."

Session with Rachel

This session started quite hard, but in the end I manage to do some. Near the end of the session, I realize actually that I was bored only trying to draw the model, and I suddenly got excited when I choose to include the background in the process, I should've started this long time ago.

Char Dev #3

So again, saturday, locked in my room and forcing down something. I did some figure studies, browsing history books, reading about the Kwantung Army. I wanted later to make a full render in Watercolor, but I felt too exhausted after 3hr of drawing\researching. My concentration stamina is quite low :).

Johnny

Forgive the harshness of my scanner, sometime it's just refuse certain kind of colors & contrast. Anyway, I was experimenting with the palette I use for my graphic novel, I wanna get used to it and express as many as i can with this 4 colors. I didn't do much at this session, my mind was wandering with a lot of uncool stuff. I tried to go for a slowly contour type of drawing.

Character Dev #2

Again this saturday, went and sat on my desk, with grapefruit juice and Bob Marley. Few days after my previous post on 1938, I was unappealed by the characters I drew. They were stiff, and complicated. The whole week I promised myself to try to simplify them. I like the 3rd Yamamoto, but somehow I can't keep the consistency drawing like this. Unnatural to me. Honda is better than last time, but can be simplify more. The bigger I draw the more complex things are. Like if empty space on the paper was beging for a pencil stroke or a wash. I also felt the need to expand my palette with Raw Sienna, a nice yellow was missing.

Character dev

I've done 2 concepts today for my graphic novel, 2 characters. I barricaded myself in my room, with some grapefruit juice and loud music. Very limited palette, burnt sienna and french ultramarine blue, I kinda like it, and probably will stick to it. I have a problem keeping the pace with this project, the time spent on it is too random.

Singapore Turf Club

I took my brushes for a walk today, went to the Turf Club on Bukit Timah. I have to make horses studies for my graphic novel. It's the perfect place for what I need. After few quick sketches, I noticed a young one holding still. Gotcha! Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine, Indian Yellow.