Time to do something AWESOME!!

Sorry about the whole posting-once-every-month thing. I've been trying to keep some sort of regular schedule, but obviously it hasn't really worked. In the meantime, here are some doodles that I've done quite recently. Both of these drawings were drawn with a point 01 Micron pen on Moleskine paper. I've been testing different characters and such and these are the result.

 

This particular drawing was just an experimentation on how I could draw shadows. I mainly looked at the works of W. Heath Robinson and Mike Mignola, who is undoubtedly the master of working shadows into his work and Robinson is just another Golden Age master of drawing.

 

Anyways...hopefully I'll be posting some more NEW drawings before the month is out.

Cheers,

A. Taylor

I Speak for the Trees

Drawn with a Micron pen and painted with watercolor paint.

Just Mucking About

This was just something I did merely because I was bored. I have no clue what in blue blazes it could be, possibly something from the mind of H. P. Lovecraft (?), but I enjoyed drawing and painting it. After I painted it I went to a site called picmonkey and did the frame and the words Good Day above it.

This was drawn with a dip pen and ink and then painted with watercolor paint. After the paint dried I then drew out the paisley design on his lapel and the iris as well as the feathers with a Sharpie pen (blue and red).

Keep a sharp eye out...

Further Exploration

 I've been still doing some test runs with my new Micron pen and this first drawing is based off of a hovercar from a book that I recently finished called The Search for WondLa, by author and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi. It is a great book and so is the one that follows it called A Hero for WondLa, I highly recommend them.

This next drawing is of one of my favorite characters, Severus Snape from Harry Potter. Granted this one isn't finished yet and he isn't dressed in his professorial robes, but I thought that it would be interesting to draw Snape in civilian clothes and lost in thought, so to speak. I'll be posting the finished product up here soon.
This last drawing was just a little character that I doodled one day and just inked it with the Micron.
Right-o, thanks for enduring the rambling, I'll have something official up here soon, with any luck.

Keep a sharp eye out...

Bigger On The Inside

When looking for time travel stories it seems virtually and astronomically impossible not to stumble upon the television show Doctor Who. It is, like I said in my previous post, one of my favorite shows and I watched an episode entilted "The Doctor's Wife," written by the amazing author Neil Gaiman. As I was watching it an idea kind of popped into my head: "What if I had a Tardis?" I then went into the sort of mechanics about my version of the Tardis and what it would be like. The idea was what if this model of the Tardis would get sort of everything from every sort of era imaginable and sort of mashed it all together and it would have various doors that lead you through different ways, or something like that. I then set to work. What I did first was do various sketches of the classic police box from the show itself, and other actual police boxes, and then I just devoured history books and looked at the artistry from various eras. For some odd reason, I couldn't just abandon the notion of the Tardis being a police box, so I kept the sort of basic layout of a police box, complete with a light at the top of it. I then just did various eccentric designs for the doors (you can't see the others, but there are 4 doors all together, just thought I should clear that up). As I was drawing this I was also watching Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock and I then I saw the lantern that is on a rail that stands in front of the door of 221b. I then decided to put, at the top of every door, a sort of lantern, which will comprise of various colors when I'm finished.

I then decided to test my new Micron pen that I bought and just drew over my pencil marks and erased the pencil when it was dry. What I then did was do a base of light blue, another homage to the show, and just started using various colors to see how it turned out. I'm not quite done, but I shall keep you folks posted as soon as I make progress. Hope you enjoy it and try something like it, too.

Keep a sharp eye out...

The Tardis is Cool & So is Quidditch

 I had recently bought a Micron brand drawing pen (with a point of 01, for those who are curious) and, instead of the usual dip pen and ink, I decided to take the Micron for a test run, so to speak. This first scribble here is just a sort of mash-up of my favorite things about one of my favorite television shows, Doctor Who, so I just sort of made up my own version of the main character, The Doctor, with his trusty sonic screwdriver and a shortly-lived fez. The colored bits in this drawing were done with a Sharpie marker and a fine-point Sharpie pen (red for the tartan design on his coat and blue for the bulb of the sonic screwdriver).

This next drawing was just one of my all time favorite books when I was growing up, Harry Potter. I could go on and on about it and how just bloody awesome and inspiring it was, but that's for another time. Granted, it might not be a good version of the Boy Who Lived, but, like I said, it was a test run. This drawing was painted with watercolor and I used red Sharpie pen to emphasize the red stripes in Harry's sweater (and it might look like his sweater is red and white, but I swear I meant for it to have the Gryffindor colors, and sorry, in advance for the sort of ovular frame around Harry, it's a bit wonky, I know).

Keep a sharp eye out...

The Scrivener & The Tartan Doctor

WOO! Good news, folks! As you, kind readers and other folks that take a gander at this set of scribbles from time to time, you may have noticed that there is a new banner adorning this here blog. I recently completed it tonight, according to the date on this post, and I thought that it was high time to some decorative recalibration. I did the little caricature of myself with inkwash, like I did with my recent caricature of Chris Riddell in a previous post, and then did the rest of it with watercolor paint. The title was done in blue sharpie pen. I have to say that my favorite part was doing something I called "The Tartan Doctor." I shall explain later in some other future post, but, until then, keep a sharp eye out.

Dog Days

These pictures were done when I was just killing time the other day. They were all drawn first with pencil and then outlined in waterproof ink and then painted over with watercolor paint.

This picture was kind of my favorite to draw out with his obnoxiously long ears. As you can tell, some of the green was still on the brush when I painted the eyebrows, my apologies.

Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.



Bubo Scribbelus

 If you readers will remember, I had drawn the owl at the bottom of this post a good couple of months ago. I just thought, purely out of whim, to draw another version of that very same owl, just so I can keep you readers updated as to what's going on (although this owl isn't what you might call "current" considering that I drew it back in March). I just wanted to let you readers know that I shall post an actually new drawing up here in a couple of days. Hopefully, it will be the new drawing that I've been doing to correct my spelling mistakes that I did on the previous post (just see the blog post directly before this one and you shall see). Right-o, keep a sharp eye out.
This current owl was drawn with Sharpie pens of three different colors (blue, red, and black).

Merely Mucking About

As the title details, I was just wasting some time on the site that I have recommended numerous times on this set of rambling scribbles, picnik. I was reminded some time ago about the poem entitled "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley. Noted that I am no philosopher of any kind, for that is not my occupation, but I thought that the last bit of the poem was very inspirational to many, I merely thought that this was good enough to show to you, the diligent readers to set of scribbles.

All right, honestly, as a side note, there will be a detective up here by the end of this year, but until then...

Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

Thank you.

The Balloonist

This little project is actually a bar of soap, the project in question is for an art class that I am currently attending. The project consisted of carving the soap into some form of a picture and then painting it. Firstly, I put the soap into the microwave for about ten seconds and then took a toothpick and carved out the picture. I then used acrylic paint to color the picture, it is actually quite enjoyable to do, as sort of a time-killing project or in the afternoon and you need something to do.
(Note: I don't profess to be some fort of master carver, since is the second of two carvings that I have done in my life, but, as I said, I quite enjoyed doing this. Also, my apologies for the obscured bit of the basket, I accidentally used the flash on the camera.)
Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

The Holmes Brothers

I have to say that both Sherlock Holmes and his brother, Mycroft, have always interested me ever since I first read "The Greek Interpreter" by Doyle. When I first read the story I was nearly as shocked as Watson was when he found that Sherlock had a brother, who, Sherlock admits, is far superior in an intellectual sense than Sherlock, which seems almost impossible to visualize. I must say that I enjoy the interaction between the Holmes brothers in the story when Watson witnesses both Sherlock and Mycroft having a sort of battle of wits as they are looking out the window and analyzing and using pure inductive powers. I was just enthralled by the scene in the Diogenes Club and I liked how it also reflected how alike both of the Holmes brothers are. Both Mycroft and Sherlock share almost the same immense intellect and how they guess a man's profession and other details of a person from pure observation. So, with this in mind, I wondered what their signatures would look like.

 It is clearly stated in the story of "The Greek Interpreter" the natures of both of the Holmes brothers. Mycroft is basically very sloth-like and, my favorite line is, when Watson shakes hands with Mycroft he describes it as "shacking the flipper of a seal", or something around those lines. Mycroft sits in his chair most of the day at the Diogenes Club and observes the world from his room. Sherlock, on the other hand, is a great ball of energy that must be on the move every minute of every day. Mycroft himself observes that Sherlock is the energetic one in the family. I just thought that their signatures should reflect such an attitude with both of the brothers.

Mycroft's signature, the first one at the beginning of this post, is far more official, since Mycroft is a government bureaucrat, and is the signature that he would typically use when signing such forms. The second one, just below the ramble you are now reading, is the one that he uses on a typical, letter-writing basis, which reflects his pure laziness and sloth-like attitude with matters. Sherlock's signature, on the other hand, is more of a swooping signature, full of energy. The first one on this post is much like Mycroft's official signature, this signature is the one that Sherlock would possibly use for his "official" letter-writing, if he were writing to diplomats saying that he retrieved the Lost Diamond of the Maharaja

 or something of that sort. The second signature of Sherlock's is possibly one that he could use to write Lestrade or someone that he had found out the culprit of the crime or that he had found something.

I merely thought that it was an interesting experiment to play around with the Holmes Brothers signatures, basically to see what they would look like and how their signatures reflect their nature. Both signatures were written in blue waterproof ink with the use of a dip pen, sorry about the smudges, at least on Sherlock's, it was intentional with Mycroft's common signature.

Also, if you would like to see the scene with Mycroft and Sherlock, I have posted below a video of the Jeremy Brett version of "The Greek Interpreter" if you would like to take a gander. Sorry about the shoddy quality.

Until next time, keep a sharp eye out for my next post.

Books and Scribbles

 Over the summer months I have had time, quite a lot of time, actually, to go to the bookstore in town to buy some secondhand books just to keep myself occupied as the summer rolls onward. One of the books that I have purchased is a children's book called Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear, but what I hadn't realized was that it was illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, an illustrator who I greatly admire. If you have not heard of Mr. DiTerlizzi and his work then here are a few of his pieces of work. He is mostly famed for his collaboration with author Holly Black with the series The Spiderwick Chronicles, which are lavishly and quite creatively done. Another is The Spider and the Fly, it is a delightfully macabre poem that was written by Mary Howitt and illustrated by Mr. DiTerlizzi. He is, in short, one of my favorite illustrators that is still in the land of the living and if you want to try to take a personal gander at his work before purchasing any of it go to his website here, I will grant that you will not be sorry.
To get back on track, this small scribble of the man with the camera was inspired by one of the characters that was in Dinosaur Summer, the main character of the book, if I am correct. To briefly summarize the book it is set in the thirties in America, but it isn't the world that we are all familiar with, it is set in the same world that was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It isn't Sherlock Holmes' bustling world of London, though, it from one of his more strict characters, Professor Edward Challenger. For those not familiar with this particular character, he is a bearded, brutish man who finds an island that is inhabited with dinosaurs, this story of Mr. Bear's is very similar in that regard. It is a great adventure story about dinosaurs, fictional and otherwise, and film-making as well, I would recommend it to anyone who has time to kill.
This regally bowing character to the right here was inspired by one of my favorite stories when I was growing up, and it still is, it is Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Although this very much looks like a mouse, I always sort of thought that it was Rat from the whimsical story. Granted that I didn't truly doodle him to be a spitting image of Rat from the story, I enjoyed doodling it all the same.
This last and final scribble in this post needs no real introduction, mainly because it has his name clearly scribbled upon it. This is just a small doodle of one of the most eccentric sleuths in detective fiction, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's famous brainchild. Although he may not be the quintessential Poirot with the messy and owl-like eyebrows, it started out as merely as an experiment. I have recently gotten a dip pen with different nibs as well as a practically brand new bottle of ink. This small scribble was mainly the result of me experimenting with that particular pen on a scrap piece of watercolor paper.
I know that I may have crammed three new drawings into one post, but finally I shall quit rambling and end...keep a sharp eye out for my next post.