Monday, March 23, 2009

THUG
























Don't have anything i can show online at the moment, so i perused my sketchbook to see if there was anything of note. worth posting. Found this sketch from a few months back. I vaguely remember seeing a photo of some gangster-type in the paper and thought he had a very distinctive face, so made a point of sketching him.

When drawing comics it's very easy to rely on 'default' faces, ie; faces you can draw out of your head all the time. Problem with that is they all end up looking the same, so it's worth sketching an unusual face from time to time. I do try and make various characters look distinct from each other but I don't think i do it enough, to be honest. I should really make it more of a habit to sketch different types of faces like this one.

Anyway, i quite like how this rough drawing came out, loose as it is. Thought i might do a grey-wash to make it look a bit more show-y for the blog, but to hell with it; sometimes a good doodle should just stay a good doodle.

Dec.

6 comments:

Rich said...

This is actually a really nice sketch Dec, for some reason I always seem to like the less is more approach.

Hope you don't mind Dec, but seeing as how you get more people on your blog than me (hell a mass murderer would get more hits on his blog than me), I just want to say people it's okay to come back to my blog the naked pics of myself have been removed it's safe once again. Tell all your friends.

Stephen Thompson said...

Really like this. It's great to see you do an inked piece with no spotted blacks. As much as we all fall back on standard faces we also tend to fall back on standard techniques. I tend to render, and you use shitloads of black shadow. Nothing wrong with that but we usually get interesting results when we leave our comfort zones.

Declan Shalvey said...

Ah thanks man.

Yeah, it's a good point about falling back on familiar techniques. I think because i didn't construct the drawing from scratch (ie, from a newspaper photo) i didn't feel like everything had to be 'fleshed out' so i could just put down a line more confidently. Helps i was doing it in pen. I reckon you suffer from the same except a more extreme version, as you show nearly everything that makes up the form of a figure, which makes it harder to pull back.

Hey Rich, glad you like the sketch. I dunno if i get more people on my blog than yours ...more comments i guess... it's official; It's okay to look at Rich's blog.

Dec.

Rich said...

Thanks for making it official Mr Shalvey.

Salvo said...

Just the basic lines and nowt else. Drawing at its purest and most direct. Nice one... I hope that didn't sound too pretentious.

Stephen Mooney said...

It's a nice doodle, definitely has a lot of character. But to me Dec's art just isn't the same without the spotted blacks. This certainly has its own little charm though.