Test of Conviction

"Test of Conviction," ink pen on paper.

Date begun: maybe 14th January, 2007.
Date completed: 20th January, 2007.

Artist comments: "Test of Conviction" is actually from a book of Chinese Fairy Tales. I took the one-page story and put it into pictures on twice as many pages. As far as I can see, it's not too bad for doing no preliminary sketches, no pencilling beforehand, and having only a rudimentary conceptual layout prior to putting pen on paper. The end of the second page shows this rather clearly, I'd say. There's only one panel I definitely wish I did differently; the one showing the two of them traveling to the fortress is just way too busy for my tastes.

This isn't for Illustration Friday or anything like that. It's a story I found amusing, and I just felt like seeing what I would create. Incidentally, I would have used PNG files, but they wouldn't fit on a 3 1/2-inch floppy disc (WinZIP never did a damn thing for graphics files...). I had to use JPG files, which in my opinion is second-best in terms of quality and file size.

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10 in 20: "crystallography"

Artist Comments: The idea behind this exercise was to visually brainstorm a random word, and see what I could come up with. I set my materials and my alarm clock to one side, took my mini-dictionary in hand, and resolved to make 10 pictures in 20 minutes. I timed myself for 2 minutes on each sketch I did, frantically re-setting the alarm as I turned the page.

I originally hatched the idea for this sort of thing back in the spring of 2005, when I drew ten self-portraits of myself in a half hour, using a Sharpie marker on paper. Nearly two years later, here's another iteration of the same exercise. I like the idea of doing exercises in short amounts of time; it tends to focus my energies and efforts when I set limitations or a framework upon myself. I recommend it to everyone, especially if you've never tried it.

For this first "10 in 20," the word I first looked at in the dictionary was "crystallography." At the outset, I hadn't a clear idea of the word's definition. Here it is, from dictionary.com:

(noun) the science dealing with crystallization and the forms and structure of crystals.

For some reason, blogger didn't post the pictures in order, though I uploaded them sequentially. I can't be bothered to try and re-order them. Not like it makes much difference, anyway; it's not a narrative.
Media: charcoal stick on paper.
All pictures completed between 9:40 and 10:00pm, Monday, 1st January, 2007.

these works protected by a creative commons license. more information is available on the main page.