Happy New Year! Following suit to last year, I got caught up in all the craziness of the end of the semester and neglected my blog. In my defense, not having Internet in your place of residence does not help such matters. However, dear readers, I will now hopefully rectify myself with a big whopping post full of new exciting things!
Suggested Reading:
Over my break from school I have been experimenting quite a bit with media that I had never felt comfortable with until recently: ink and gouache. I had started to ease into it with my work for the Advocate with the help of some nice Bristol paper, some choice pens, and Photoshop, but I decided to be a little braver with it during my time off.
At the beginning of break I was perusing Goodwill and found some interesting Life Nature Library books from the 1960s. These were filled with some great animal photographs as well as some amazingly brash captions that can only be found in an age prior to sensitivity. As you would expect, these appealed to my curiosity and dark sense of humor. With a barrage of tantalizing subject matter to translate, I began working feverishly in my sketchbook.
Posted here are the results of my explorations. I started by trying to render things in simple black and white, and then moved on to ink washes and the infiltration of painting with white gouache. With the serendipitous effect of some bleeding red ink, I started to crave some color, which I appeased by investing in some brown inks and breaking out the neglected watercolor set from a couple of summers ago. Also thrown into the mix where a few layers of colored pencil, which performed wonderfully on top of the dried ink and gouache.
And there you have it: the beginning of a new love affair. What is most enticing about ink, gouache, and watercolor is that you can let them dry up and then reanimate them later with water. This is immensely useful for time and money’s sake. I’m hoping to keep up this momentum and utilize these techniques this semester in my work for the Advocate. It’s been a really refreshing advancement so far. Thanks for reading,
- Blake
P.S. Further inspiration that drove me to this madness: Aaron Horkey, Frankenstein – Mary Shelley, From Hell – Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell, V for Vendetta – Alan Moore/David Lloyd, MAUS – Art Speigelman, Stitches – David Small, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the Will Eisner documentary Profession: Cartoonist.
