August 24, 2011 in K.I.S.S.
Thank you for being so patient. One of those flus bit me and forced me off the desk for over a week. So I hope you had a lot of fun drawing things in isometric projection. Since you now become more and more a good KISSer (nice word, isn’t it?) I want to introduce you to five new pens. Consider this as my top five of favorite pens.
August 9, 2011 in How To
If you read my old KISS-posts you’re probably now equipped with a bunch of nice pens and a few basic sketching skill. Last we talked about drawing with simple shapes. That’s nice and easy, but very flat. Means: Sometimes we want the third dimension. There are many ways to draw perspectives correctly. Most of them are complicated and difficult to learn. You can go into that when you feel you want more of your drawings then just simple sketches. For now I show you a very effective way to draw in perspective. It’s called the isometric or parallel projection. Means that all lines in your perspective view are running parallel.
July 27, 2011 in K.I.S.S., Sketches
I think we mostly covered all the basic pens you need for your simple sketches. So before we come to the more advanced drawing tools there is one I want to mention too: The german Schwan-Stabilo Point 88. I don’t like them too much, because I feel like they are too thin for my hand and the felt tips are a bit to fragile for me. But they are very popular and like the Sharpies it’s almost a cult pen. I guess especially girls love the thin shape of a pencil. They are around one dollar each. The fact that they are available in almost every color, at least 20 I think, makes them a good choice for scribbles with colors e.g. for street artist’s graffiti black book.
Stabilos on paper, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
(c)2011 Thomas Mayer/Meza Boogie, All Rights Reserved.
July 20, 2011 in K.I.S.S.
Remember the last time we talked about simple sketching? Now since you have the pens we come to the basic drawing techniques. Remember this is not a graphic tutorial or lessons for perfect drawing, it’s a small manual for you to draw your own clip arts and helping you expressing your ideas with simple sketches.
Before you start let me give you some advice:
The trick to start every sketch is to draw a very rough shape. Almost everything can be divided in very simple shapes. Train your eye a bit how to find the squares and circles and with a little practice even the human body isn’t that complicated anymore. But before that it’s totally okay to avoid realistic drawings of people. Don’t worry about the naturalism of you sketches. Don’t count fingers or toes. A hand is a hand even with just three fingers. Check out cartoon characters like the Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, or Donald Duck: No five fingers here too! Same with proportions. It needs a lot of practice to draw exact proportions. Trying to do that in the beginning is just a PITA. Enjoy your sketching life without proportions and perspectives. It makes things so much easier.
I recommend to draw the shapes with a pencil. Don’t put too much pressure on it, light lines makes it easier to erase what you don’t like. After you think the construction ready it’s time for the Sharpie (See KISS-pens): Draw over your construction and then erase the pencil shapes. It’s good to use a permanent marker here because others might smear when you’re using the eraser. You can start by leaving daily “Post-It”-Sketches on the fridge or on the coffeemaker.
(c)2011 Thomas Mayer/Meza Boogie, All Rights Reserved.
July 12, 2011 in Illustrations, K.I.S.S.
In the line of very useful and versatile pens come the Staedtler Lumocolor series. Great for your daily pocket graffiti on (your) wall or in your ring book. Staedler offers a range from non-permanent to water-resistant with various tips in different colors. I prefer black as permanent marker. The fine S and F tips and the M are my favorites. The permanents smell a bit strong, but they don’t smear. That becomes very handy when using tracing paper. They somehow play in the same league as the Sharpie‘s (See the KISS-Pen-Post about that), but bit the fine tip I feel better working with the Lumos.
The graphic above was made with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It’s also on deviantart.com
(c)2011 Thomas Mayer/Meza Boogie, All Rights Reserved.
