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Industrious Illustrating #52 – Experimentation

Robin Leave a comment

Hello, and welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! It’s now 2024, which opens up a lot of new possibilities and directions for the rest of the year. That means I want to highlight a few drawings I’ve made recently that are more experimental or different from what I usually draw.

This was more of a graphic design-esque drawing I made for some zippered coin purses that I ordered from a supplier during a sale depicting a plastic file, two different types of plastic nippers, and two hobby markers that would all be common tools for building model kits. I wanted to go for something simple yet bold, as my usual style focuses a lot on details and elaborate painting.

This, meanwhile, is a quick digital doodle of the cell towers disguised as palm trees that I saw all around the Los Angeles and Orange County areas when I was visiting family there over winter break. I wanted to convey the feeling of driving home after a long day and realizing something is slightly off with one of the freakishly tall palm trees lining the freeway. I also wanted to free myself from needing every drawing to be highly polished, so I set myself a time limit on this one and stopped drawing once the 20 minutes was up.

That’s all for this week, but I want to wrap things up with a quick question. What ways have you personally experimented with your artwork recently — and if not, how will you experiment with it in the future? I’d love to hear about it!

Hermit Enola

Micey Leave a comment

Here’s Enola, her deal is that she’s a reclusive bugs witch. Here, I tried to include more character interactions to see how Enola bounces off of people. There’s also a doodle of Enola in formal wear, and me testing out her with short hair. I want to give her a winter hat, but I’m not sure about the design.

Wolverine Stew: Snow in a Lamplight

clydemg 1 Comment

It is quiet here, footsteps home

Masked in the flurries of cold I

Cannot fully see but certainly feel

Merging with my face

Crackling like static, like muffled rain

And I walk along the lines of amber light

Watching the snow quickly fall

Into and out of the glow, out of being seen

And yet still it grows into the winter

Morning. I’ll see it through frost

Blooming on my windows

And the snow will become

Blizzards, rain, thawing puddles, clear skies

But for now, it is still

It is quiet here

Observer: Agriculture

zbn Leave a comment

Whenever winter comes, it reminds me of agriculture and food. I used textured brushes to mimic the traditional Chinese painting style. I drew the boy and the cow in a modern comic style to have some fun with the old painting style. I used the seal script type, used by the Chinese thousands of years ago, to stress the traditional Chinese culture in my art. China is an agricultural-based country, so I chose to draw the wheat field and the boy who herds the cow to represent the image of August. I left a lot of empty space and used very few brush strokes to make the image simple and textured. I used Procreate for this piece, to experiment with a different software program and used Photoshop to add the words to the image.

aSoSS 09 | Streak

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

I gotta go, I promised the boys I’d hop on Fortnite tonight.

How long does it take you to ride back?

Uh, about ten minutes.

Palmer Commons, 9:00PM, 11/14/2023

the controller is a time machine. i pick it up and adjust the portal, and suddenly i am in the middle of nowhere, or everywhere, or somewhere in between. perhaps i am in a dream. the air vibrates slightly, like above a truck exhaust on a summer day. for a moment, we are ten again. snow day, undercover, bag of chips to the side. no one has suffered loss because of laughter, i think. you laugh as your character defeats mine, just to prove a point.

Nice hair color, by the way.

Thank you!

I had blue highlights a couple years ago but I could never pull it off like you.

Jack Binion’s, 8:00PM, 12/27/2023

the yard of grass is black and blooming. the owner comes out and sprays a section with pesticide. the leaves turn blue and the ground wilts. for the aesthetic, she says. i nod in understanding. a speck of light, a lotus in the mud. enough to latch on to your consciousness — there are many ways to do so, and many more wrong ways to attempt. blue tendrils curl around my abdomen. they disturb the air with lavender and rose, touching a memory that is badly erased. like the outline of a traced figure, you return. are you smiling or crying? the wrinkles fade to oblivion.

Everyone but this guy. He’s from Washington.

Loyalties, man.

All I’m saying is if U of T and UMich played, I’d be rooting for UMich.

Yeah, because U of T is ass!

Cardiovascular Center, 7:00PM, 1/8/2024

twenty-six years is a long time. most spiders only live up to one. twenty-six generations ago, the wolverines tasted victory. twenty-six generations ago, humans climbed out of the middle ages and into the renaissance. loyalties were tested back then, too; it seems to be a common pattern of history. can history survive if the people do not make the same mistakes? will it fizzle and fall out of order? things will only have to be taught once. a converging slope, an asymptotical plane of information. in twenty-six generations, only time will tell.

Capturing Campus: January

EKArts Leave a comment

Thoughts before the end

My exam is in two days, and I’d rather pitch my head through a wall
but I trekked to Walgreens for toothpaste instead, so I must be an adult now
living somewhere that’s always alive with conversations
(you wouldn’t believe what I heard in the elevator)
What if I moved to Canada next autumn
I’m tired of discovering myself
to be more complicated 
than yesterday’s inbox 
I’ll sift through it
sometime (not soon)
I’m headed to the party
but the whole world’s on fire
wondering what she said to her
that made her leave
Can I walk with you
I’m so tired
Could you promise me 
that everything will be okay in the end