These doodles seem to be the best so far. It's been a bit of an experimental journey getting here but I think these drawings are sort of the culmination of the evolution up until now. Take a look at the rest below the cut and let me know what you think.
Once again, here's another batch of my noxious nocturnal noodling. These pages represent a certain synthesis of all the previous drawings and I think they are perhaps the most successful drawings so far. They've become palimpsestical accumulations of various drawing styles and languages including pure abstraction, flat color, text and representation. Who knew they were such smarty pants!? Even more aristocratic artistry below the cut!
Now we're getting somewhere! After a few doodles where I started to incorporate larger areas of color, this one takes it to its logical conclusion and makes the whole drawing a patchwork of color. That then becomes a ground on which I do a bunch of doodles in darker marker. Those doodles themselves merge to form some sort of skull! Pretty nifty! The other doodle like this is below the cut.
In this drawing I've taken the same approach but this time I included the dark blue marker as part of the color patches. The other line drawings over top are done in brown, black and silver markers. I think the skull drawing ties first one together in way that isn't happening here. This is just a rather random assortment of motifs and elements. I probably had to do this drawing before I could go ahead with the next batch. They are more successful that this and I'll be posting them up very soon. Thanks for reading!
So here's the first fully inked, colored and lettered page of Marathon! The book will be black with one color throughout and for this test I used a warm ochre. I'm currently leaning toward this area of the spectrum but until I'm coloring the book in earnest, that decision is still not final. Thanks for visiting and stay tooned for more previews and process posts!
MEGAPOST! I'm including a number of these now so I can start to chart an evolution here. These few doodles get to a place just before they take a big leap visually. It's important to bear in mind that these drawings are revelatory for me. They really are doodles done without the impediment of a controlling or censoring voice so when I look at them later, the results can be surprising. I'll comment on each after the cut…
This one's a maximalist approach where I just keep adding to the drawing. Of note here is that I'm starting to ad elements from diagrams, anatomical drawings and even writing (in this case a letter 'R'). Besides the obvious drawings of hands, you'll also find an ape portrait, a tree trunk, some teeth and a design for an impossible finger puppet.
This drawing is probably a reaction to the last since it's less congested. I might have felt that the last one went too far and so jumped off this one a little early. Perhaps the most interesting element is the double ended foot and the cloud cookies. Besides that, this one's pretty conservative.
Formally this drawing is interesting because I'm filling in areas with color. In general these drawings tend to be latticeworks of line drawings but this one seems to be introducing color patterns and shapes. This one has a lighter, a smoking toe, a toe that appears to be squishing someone, duck feet, shackles hands, peacock feathers and an Egyptian pyramid. With enough imaginative effort, I'm sure I can start to weave a narrative through these elements.
This drawing is important because I'm starting to incorporate words into the pictures. In this case something about 'best' meant that I should include it. It might have been something Jason was saying that inspired this.
I feel that this is a fairly successful drawing. It has many of the new elements that I've added to these and it seems to do it in a pleasing arrangement. What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine but I can appreciate it for its formal qualities.
I've saved the best for last! This is my favorite of this run of drawings. This drawing started with a light green portrait inspired by Jason talking about 'Burritoman'. I think I added the sports jersey with the number 12 to indicate that Burritoman was part of a team (probably with 12 members). From there some randomness ensues with the tentacles, the club arm, the mouth and bacon strips. Our conversation must have come to Doc Savage at one point because he's given mention as is the quote, "Hot Foamy Flouride Bullets". I'm sure that was a actually spoken.
Well, what the heck have we got here!? Your guess is as good as mine but I suspect that's some sort of giant eyeball looking at a handheld mirror held by a disembodied arm connected to a mitochondrial skyline supported by a prone, headless body. Oh yeah, there also a guy with a giant crab claw for an arm! Of course! Thank Cod, the next one is a little easier to 'digest'. Click "more" to see for yourself.
Here's another couple Loony Sharpie Doodles for your amusement. Above you'll find a lobster cow skull, a little blue bird, an ice cream cone (with two scoops!) and some broccoli, of course! Below the cut you'll find an open mouth spewing green foam that expands into an array of strange flowers creating a bizarre arrangement topped with what looks like veiny jingle bells! Your guess is as good as mine!
Every Sunday night Jason Robert Bell and I have a sit down where we chew the fat, talk about ideas and perhaps most importantly; draw! The medium of choice on these evenings is an array of colored sharpies, typewriter paper and our imagination.
Anything we make will be fodder for an upcoming project (more on that later), but I thought I'd show them here first before they are subsumed into this other larger event. We've been doing this now for a few weeks and each evening I'm able to turn out a few of these bizarre, stream of consciousness sketches. I'll be posting them all up eventually but for starters, here's two. Enjoy!
