92NY Ink

Here's what I worked on in my last 92NY class- trying the different styles of inking blacks and cross-hatching and hatching that we were going over. Not all of them are entirely successful, but at least there's ink on the page!

92NY Homework 4

Assignment:  Make up a story (even if it's just about you and [a] fantasy creature doing something mundane like grocery shopping or walking your dog)

Here goes:

 

92NY Homework 3

 Here's the prompt:

Make a narrative that builds . What I mean by this is that the story starts quiet, and ends loud or starts simple and gets increasingly claustrophobic. Or starts with a character getting increasingly expressionistically drawn.

I went with the simple-to-complicated formula, without trying to actual change the art style.

Still working on the blacks...

92NY Homework 2.1

I did another "doorway" strip at the SAW Jam last night.

I like a lot about this (especially panel four) but I think my faces are sort of in the uncanny valley - too "realistic" to be cartoony, and too crappy to be realistic... I need to find a way to get to the essence of proportion and expression.

92NY homework 2

The assignment for this week (due next Sunday) was to create a strip that involved moving through a doorway. I stuck with the four-panel layout and made this little PSA:

 

 A little corny, but I like it.

I may do another exercise that meets the specs, but with a little more action.

92 NY Class report & Homework 1

So, as I alluded to last post, I am taking a class called Cartooning for Beginners from Josh Bayer, cartoonist and educator, through 92NY, the cultural enrichment center that is part of the 92nd Street YMHA in New York City. The class so far has been skewed a little toward the comics/graphic novel domain rather just cartoon art; it's a context I am familiar with, but I am much more interesting in actual mark-making techniques than I am in the theories of panel transition and closure. (See this now 13-year-old post.)

Anyway, I finished the homework from the first class last week, that I posted in-progress last time, complete with in inadvertent water stain:

Part of my deal is that I just have to to throw more ink on the page!

In the spirit of completeness, here are some blurry shots of my in-class markings from the first session:

       

 

This week we worked on inking some - particularly with regard to clothing and wrinkles. I felt pretty good about some of this work:

I actually used a brush open for these last two.

And, finally,  here's a tree trunk cross-hatched in Ernie Bushmiller style:

I am looking forward to continuing the class and will post more.