Monday, December 28, 2009

Just Doodles



I've been forgetting to just sit down and "just draw anything". I guess that's what people used to talk about back in my early days before college. People had this cliche' that if you become a professional and take money for your work then you're selling out . I needed to make money !
So I'm selling out. At least I can draw and paint everyday. I don't have any important social statement to make that can't be said in plain English. But I do like to draw. Right now I'm just trying to save some of that energy to use on non- work related things.
The Shrek Book is almost finished but it's like the sprint before the end of the race. It always seems to be the hardest.
-Larry

Monday, December 21, 2009

coffee house sketches




Coffee houses were my favorite places to draw people. Cafeterias are good too. People tend to sit still for at least ten seconds. Since I don't drink coffee or eat in cafeterias much I don't do this very often anymore. Cafe Trieste in San Francisco's North Beach is a favorite even though I Live in L.A. I guess coffee houses are better than restaurants because there's no dinner plates to take up room. These were done in a Moleskine 4X6 sketchbook with my favorite "Fude no Pen" by Pentel. It's the short one that you stick in your pocket. I think these should display at actual size . maybe a little bigger.
-Larry

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Graphite in Sketchbook



I just adjusted my drawing table to be at a comfortable height. I've never found the perfect table but the old cast iron base table I have in the studio is classic and simple. Since it's an Iron pedestal you can scoot right up to the edge with out banging you knees into any table legs.
Norman Rockwell had this exact table base but he used it as a huge palette.
Although I do most of my professional work on the computer using photoshop 4 and some Painter 11 I still want to have traditional equipment in the studio. It can get crowded in here .
Oh yeah, the drawing . Fifteen minutes of graphite on hard Aquabee sketch book. I've been using aquabee for years now. Mainly because they are real sturdy and the paper can take a lot .
Maybe not the best for inking with brush but not bad either. It's cold press.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

15 minute painter



Another experiment using Painter 11. Just starting to get comfortable with Painter 11.
The pencil tool seems to be a little more versatile which is what most of the drawing is made up with. The Acrylic brush seems easier to control. I used it on some of the face. I don't know if it's just me getting used to the tool or if it's the painter upgrade. It does seem to respond better through out. Nothing exciting -just testing out the program again before I have to get to work on some advertising illustration then some book Illustration after that.
-Larry

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Holiday Card 2009


Well , I've been cranking away on that Shrek book at night and weekends and Advertising work most days. Work seems to bottle-neck close to the end of the year. I have to force myself to do more sketches!
In the meantime here's a higher resolution image of this year's Holiday Card at 150dpi for printing out.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah , Joyous Kwanzaa, cheery Boxing day , wonderful Winter solstice, Raucous Rose bowl Parade, and Happy Birthday Beethoven!
-Larry

Monday, December 7, 2009

Harajuku scribbles





I've been delinquent on the drawing every night. I spend too much time working.
So here are a couple of real quick sketches from the crowded streets of the Harajuku area in Tokyo. A camera gets it faster because everyone moves too quickly to get in more than a couple of lines. Of course this is from earlier this year. I have to find the pen I used on these because the ink is like india ink and I know it was a disposable pen . These aren't the most interesting people there but that was an extremely crowded time and there are enough costumed Japanese kids were whizzing about to make your head spin. It would be great to just set up a spot there and draw people all day long. 東京がだいすき!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Painter 11 upgrade



I just upgraded to Painter 11 today to if the speed increase is significant . So far I haven't noticed but I haven't really used it that much yet. So I'm using mostly the Conte brush and some acrylic brush on this because they seem to be the most predictable in my experience. I hear tell that the transform tool is greatly improved and that the color management is better which is really important since I've had trouble with it in the past.
I'm trying to post a large image so that the texture in painter shows up. We'll see if this blog site can handle it. I still haven't used Painter to do storyboards yet. Maybe that will change in the future. This drawing is just taking Painter 11 for a run through.
-Larry

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

High School Dragons


I thought I'd post another old pre -"real Artist" sketch. Since I hardly ever dated anything I'm guessing that this is from Junior high school in San Diego. Probably late Jr. high to early high school. I can only tell by the paper and subject matter.
I used to buy drawing pencils at the paint store because the only art store I could think of was a long bus ride away . It looks like this is on rough drawing paper from the high school art department. I think I got the diagonal hatching from studying drawings of Leonardo and the dragons were probably a Leonardo influence as well.
the heads on these are about in inch long. The actual drawing is actually much lighter . Looks like an HB pencil lead.
I haven't drawn any monsters lately. Might be time to do that again.
-Larry

Monday, November 23, 2009

Nihon Fude pen





Just digging out the old Japanese brush pen. They are actually made for writing letters not for drawing. I first started buying them in the mid eighties to do storyboards and other sketching. I can only find them in Japanese stationary stores. There's a bit of a mark up when they come to the states so when ever I've gone to Japan I've picked up a lot of them - Much cheaper there - aside from the cost of the plane ticket to get there. I think that they are far superior to a lot of the brush pens you find in art stores. The ink on these pens are pretty dense so they don't dry very fast unless you draw on very absorbent paper- like copier paper. and of course they're perfect for practicing Kanji.
Just a quick little drawing because that's what I'm trying to limit this blog to.
-Larry

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

still workin'




Just finished working on some LEGO illustration for today and decided to play around with Painter some more before I get back to working on Dreamworks stuff for tonight.
I always say that I'm starting to like painter more and more . It's just frustrating that it still has some awkward functions. I also notice how it looks so much better when I import a Painter image into Photoshop. This is just some sketching done on my 21 inch Cintiq. Heck , I've been sitting here drawing on it all day . Why switch gears now? I know. To get back to paper and pencil. Someone pointed out that Painter looks best if you work at 100 percent- Well it's true otherwise you can't see the painterly texture very well. So that's why there's a close up .
This one was drawn using mostly pastel brushes, some acrylic brushes in the hair and a little airbrush on the cheeks. Here's another example of " don't know what to draw". I did originally learn to draw from copying comics when I was 10 years old.
Okay, now let's see if I have any energy left to work on my Dreamworks project.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009



First, this is not a sketchbook item. I'm cheating. This is actually a comp I did one day for a key art company. It was actually only done as a comp but they used it as a finished art. That's why it only took one work day to do.
But since we were on the subject of Painter 10 and what I was able to do with it I thought I'd through this one in. I only found out last week that it was ran in People magazine . I guess it ran in September. The main sketching was done in Photoshop. The pencil texture and spatters were done in Painter 10. I just have to move back and forth between the two if I want to get anything done. The car was first a 3d object that I staged and rendered in Strata 3d then used as a base.The faces of course were referenced but the figures and clothes were made up. I know if I were a REAL PRO I'd photograph models. But who the heck has time when you come in at 9:30 AM and the say they need it by 4PM and we need to see a couple of ruffs first to decide what should be in the image and then change things up to the last minute. Since this ran in publication already I suppose it's okay to post on my blog.
-Larry

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Painter 10 pastels

Okay , just to keep busy on this blog, here's a little sketch just playing around
with Painter 10's pastel brush. This brush seems easier to control for my style of working than some of the other tools like Oils or water color. It also seems to respond to the pencil pressure better. I can still control Photoshop's brushes with more accuracy but Painter has it's strengths.
Below is a close up to shoe the "pastel" texture. Again this is a sketch with no model. I really don't like looking for models. It takes too much time. But that's something I should force myself to do.
Still spending more time on the book illustrations so I try to squeeze a little something into this blog. -Larry




Thursday, November 12, 2009

face close up



And a close up of the image below. Just to show the painter textures.
I'm trying to get it so that when you click on the image it gets huge. I'm not that good at this blog stuff yet.

-Larry

larger view



For some reason that I'm too tired to figure out right now, the images don't display larger when double clicked. maybe this will work ..

Sketch in Painter 10

Breaking from the paper sketchbook and playing around with Painter 10 this time.
There are things about Painter that you can't do very well in Photoshop but at the same time there's tons of things you can do in Photoshop that you just can't do in Painter.
This sketch was just me playing around with the Conte Crayon brush . There are so many tools/brushes in painter that you can spend hours just seeing what each one can do , And that's without making variations of each brush.
I thought it might be interesting to show a progression from initial scribble to full blown Painter doodle. My conclusion is that you break out painter when you want to show a lot of sketchy texture and stroke marks.
-Larry








Sunday, November 8, 2009

Testing out that tracing paper again

Okay another simple sketch with absolutely no idea behind it just making up another face.
Prisma feels good on tracing paper but there are also different grades of tracing paper.
One of my favorites is that translucent architectural vellum. Expensive , but really nice .
Added a little painting in photoshop.
Maybe next time I should actually have an idea. Looking at it now, it has this sort of Margaret Keane quality to it. I should add some Thomas Kincade type color to it.
Well , self imposed home work to keep me drawing anything.
-Larry





Saturday, November 7, 2009

pen and ink

Just testing out the old pen points that I have from back in the day.
Again , the head is about an inch high. Gotta get back to the storybook illustrations now.
-Larry




Close up.


Friday, November 6, 2009

Did this one early this morning . Around 8 am. Dug out the old tracing pad and prisma pencil.
The hard surface of the tracing paper takes the prisma well. I planned on posting this 15 minute pencil sketch but after scanning it , adjusting the levels and such I couldn't help adding color. Damn Photoshop. It's so easy to paint in photoshop. I just keep playing. No mixing color . No waiting for paint to dry and no paper buckling . I couldn't paint on tracing paper anyway. Maybe with markers but then the pencil would smear. It's hard for me to get back to "Old School".
Anyway , these are all meant to be quick sketch book stuff.
-Larry





Thursday, November 5, 2009


Yesterday and last night I was working two jobs so here's a pair that I drew in my book last week and posted on Facebook. But the Face book images are too small. Maybe I'm just not a Facebook expert yet. These are just in my sketchbook so no models. I like to test my anatomy. I can't be like Frazetta where I say ' " Gee, I never drew a rabbit before" ' and slowly close my eyes , open them and proceed to draw a beautifully rendered and ACCURATE rabbit.' With no reference. I love that story. On these drawings my wife said " Enough with the muscle ladies already!" I have drawings of fat ladies eating Krispy Kreams in my book if you'd rather see that. Those were all drawings done at malls and museum cafeterias. I like drawing bone and muscle.
If I've offended any Krispy Kream lovers , I'm sorry.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009


Okay, just drew an elf as an excuse to do a little inking. I should do inking on Bristol hot press instead of cold press sketch paper. After inking I did a little color in photoshop. If I just keep drawing a bunch of stuff maybe something will come of it.
No rhyme or reason. Posting another sketchbook drawing. pencil and watercolor . The character on her arm is "Kaminari". The Japanese character for thunder and lightning. It looks a little stiff 'though. I can write better kanji in brush now .

Monday, November 2, 2009

While not technically a sketchbook drawing I did paint this at the MET in Manhattan. This was done in Photoshop using my Modbook ( the Mac based tablet laptop that I carry around with me all the time). I really liked the way Houdin captured emotions in his Sculptures.

-Larry
Okay, So here we are nine years later . Now I actually have a sketch book. Still into the Sci-fi stuff. Not so much super heros. I enjoyed drawing them but I really couldn't get past the masks and capes. I mean if I saw someone dressed like a superhero in real life I'd fall off of my chair laughing. Maybe that's a the special power!

High school Drawing

Since this is a Sketch book blog I thought I'd start off with an early sketchbook item . This is before I actually had a sketchbook and drew on cheap sketch pads that cost 50 cents with cheap hobby brushes and cheap stationary dip pens with India ink borrowed from school.
This was from when I was 16 years old . Obviously influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Richard Corben. I don't think I've done any dry brush in decades. I got better.
-Larry