Sketchbook, Transition

I've just moved and gotten a job. So I missed a week of posting. I am also working on a very small comics project which has eaten up quite a lot of my time. As such, I thought it might be fun to post so super loose drawings I made in my sketchbook that I kind of like. Taking sketchbook work and dropping digital color quickly on it can be pretty rewarding. A casual, furious drawing exercise. Here are just a couple.

A Day Outside Victoria's Secret

I work at the mall. When I have a break at work I sit on some nearby couches. These couches have been provided for shoppers who need to take a moment away from the stress and hardship that apparently accompanies buying a pair of sandals; it is a small quiet space where people can come to escape loud stores, sore feet, and frequently annoying friends. I sit and I draw an eclectic mix of folks. I don't know anything about them save what they look like, but I generally like these people.

Across from the couch is a Victoria's Secret. If you don't know what that is, it is an underpants store. They intend to sell underpants to women. They do this by putting their underpants on women and taking pictures of them. Then they make the pictures 10 feet tall, put them in the front of the store and point a bright light at them. I've never sold underpants to anybody, but that seems like one way to do it.

In any case, when Lauren Kolm told me I should go draw at Victoria's Secret for our gendered spaces project, I did it from the perspective I was accustomed to. I took my sketchbook to the mall and drew for a good long while. These are the illustrations I made from those observations.

Mall Drawings

I am posting on a tuesday today. Delayed posting because I decided I wanted to pre-empt the next piece I've made for the project I do with http://laurenkolm.blogspot.com/. Without getting too specific before the full post, it was a reportage project. I drew at the mall. Quite a lot of my fellow illustrators at Washington University did reportage drawing at the St. Louis Galleria. I didn't until this summer when Lauren Kolm made me.

Anyway. After plenty of on site drawing I decided on a specific idea for an illustration. I needed to draw portraits of real people I saw in the mall. For the final to work as I envisioned I ended up working largely from photographs, making some formal changes where needed. Here are studies for some of the portraits.

I love how much character this guy had just in his goatee.

And here are the watercolors that I did over these pencils. These eventually make their way into the final illustration. For the most part my color strategy was to try to remain as true to life as possible while for the sake of the final piece keeping the colors mostly muted. At the same time it was important to try to preserve the attitude and character of each person through color decisions.