From the Vault #6: John Lennon

Here's another blast from the past. This ink/colored pencil combo was done in either late 2004 or early 2005. It was cold out, that's all I really remember. This John Lennon piece was initially done as a test to just hone my skills a little bit more with colored pencil (still my favorite medium besides the computer). It came out pretty good with some obvious tweaks that would need to be made: his wonked glasses, cigarette positioning and his ginormous sausage fingers on his right hand. Overall I do like how the coloration came out on this guy. At one point I wanted to make prints of this to sell but in the end deemed it not strong enough. My problem is I always think to big, not so much in grandiose ideas but more so in size. I planned to do this as a 16x20 inch (or thereabouts). In retrospect these would probably have made pretty kick-ass 5x7 or 5x8's.

Big, But Not So Bad

A couple days ago I posted an image of the first watercolor I had done in nearly a decade. Here is that same T-rex but done in ink. It has probably been closer to ten years since I've done anything with brush and ink, and when I had it was pretty bad then too. I just never had a steady enough hand for it. That's why Photoshop, Illustrator, etc... have really become such a huge crutch for me. They come with a "History" window. If Strathmore wants to corner the market in paper maybe they should invent one of those. Eh, Strathmore? You hear me? Get on it, you'll make a bundle! You may want to cash those checks in Euros though. The American dollar is officially about as valuable as toilet paper.