Entry for Jan 23, 2014

On the Thursday evening the TSA hosted a special event in conjunction with the Offsite Design Festival. Titled Illustration Noir, the evening had two hours of poses, music and sets channeling a Film Noir feeling.
Karen Justl, who teaches at the school handpainted some striking sets and other decorations, and models Shel and Sergio were in costumes loaned by Monarch Vintage, a local clothes store.
A number of people came out to draw, and I helped out with the hosting of the night. As a consequence my own drawing was not as focussed as it could have been. It was interesting to see a more Toons On Tap style drawing session taking place at the school, and a real drawing challenge. All of these are done with Pitt pen on 18 x 24" Canson Recycled Sketch paper. The top centre and bottom ones are roughly 4 minutes each, and the 2nd and 4th ones are roughly 15 minutes each.

Entry for Feb 26, 2013

On that Tuesday I braved yet another of this year's ugly, blizzardy nights to get over to the Rhino bar, where Toons on Tap were having their 1-year anniversary drawing session.
Sion and local Burlesque person Charlie Quinn were working with a Film Noir/gangster theme, amplified by a really good soundtrack and dramatic sidelighting.
These are three 10-minute studies, a 15-minute and a 20-minute one, and two more 5-minute ones.
The 15 and the 20 are done with hard compressed charcoal, and all the rest are done with a Sakura Graphic pen.
All are done on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson XL Drawing paper.
It was a fun evening.

2nd Entry for January 9, 2009

These were 15-minute poses. On the one I used up most of the time on drawing his face & expression. In the other one, he tried to keep a pole raised above his arms. After 5 minutes it had sagged, as I expected, from upright to pointing downwards. I- is an animator, and fond of caricature, so I figured I should do something with his staff. In retrospect, a gondolier might have worked, or harpooning a whale, but it was the St George & the Dragon motif that came to mind, so I ran a little with it.