I just wanted to write a few notes about my process,preferences, artistic peccadilloes etc. this came up out of a conversation I was having at the Wilson 96 while the Steelers killed the Jets in the ground game. I was talking about why I love to do posters for bars/bands/ TShirts etc. (see the label "Pub Life Sketches or the blog ANY HOW TOWN) why I don't charge that much for it, why it doesn't seem to happen enough. The main reason I love doing these poster is that it's a chance to really draw, my friend S.Power said, "but when you're here, you draw all the time". No, no I don't.
A comparison is in order. The Top illustration "Exhibit A" is a drawing of a Tiger playing guitar in the reeds, this fulfills my criteria of what a drawing is, I rarely if ever, get do to drawings because when I go out to sketch I produce about seven pages of "Exhibit B" in about 2-3 hours. This short hand is much like a comic book artist's "Thumbnail" pages, which are breakdowns of what size panels, what action goes onto one comic page, for me this is how I compose my paintings. What you see above are several sketches of people sitting in trees, mostly trees that have fallen into the water, or are growing out of the side of a river bank.
If there is a check mark, chances are I'll give it a shot when I'm in the studio. These sketches were done on Wednesday of last week I hope to be posting at least three of the finished works at the end of this week. I wanted to do something different from my usual grounds, introduce some new colours and character to my palette/language, these "tree folk" have been running around in my head for awhile and I couldn't concentrate on any Tom Waits project stuff. Any notes included on these pages either relate to what the images should feel like or make absolutely no sense at all.
Why don't I spend more time on sketches ? Then you'd get to draw more ! These thumbnails get me to where I'm going really fast, since I usually work in series if I can draw about 40 of these squares I have a bunch of stuff to choose from, drawing takes too much time and I'll probably change something in the composition when I'm painting anyway so these guides are all I need.
When I finally get some time to draw it will be for my Graphic Novel/ Kids series, "ANY HOW TOWN" which you can read about if you follow the link, in the links section. I've been going crazy looking at Peterson's "Mouse Guard" series and the comic,"The Stuff of Legend" that size of comic would be perfect for Any How Town.
The sketchbook size that this page is from is 8 x 11 " which is so cool looking it has become a favourite, the pens are micron 0.3 I think, I grind those poor bastards down into nubs, but really they're $3.00 each, so who's the real poor bastard ?
Expect alot of posts this week, for warm ups I am painting a skeleton mariachi band, so expect one of those a day and hopefully at the end of this week I'll have three or five nice 16x16 or 18 x 18's to show you, that will be hung at the Cameron House for the month of February.
(If sometimes these posts make no sense it is because I never go back and reread or edit them.)
A.Shay Hahn
