These are three character studies of faces/hairstyles from Hair: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical.
I know, i am all over the map here, but here's my train of thought, meandery though it may be.
Working in a new medium can be really discouraging. I am used to how i sketch with tangible media like pencils and pens and markers, and i am used to producing a rendering that i am generally pleased with. I can experiment with new things within those familiar media, and still be happy with what i come up with. But, the past series of sketches with the tablet, i've felt like a big loser, what with how difficult it was to figure out how to make it do the simplest things, and still being largely unthrilled with the result.
So today, i was like, "I am going to draw on actual paper products using things i understand and have a certain affinity for, so i can remind myself that i don't suck at sketching, especially now that Eric has done gone and put this on Facebook and thus i can see that A HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT THESE THINGS EGAD. *waves* Hi all y'all.
Anyhow. Back when i did a lot of rendering regularly, i used to be generally on the lookout for cool backgrounds. This started when i did a paper project for a class and put all my renderings on the classified section of the newspaper instead of on actual sketchbook paper or whatever. When i joined this blog, it kicked back in, that background-scoping, and i've started amassing some interesting prospects, of which the background of today's sketches is an example.
You may recognize it as a decorative cardboard print that Yoox.com uses on the boxes they ship their merchandise in. (This brought me a fabulous pair of wooden-sole heeled sandals made by Cydwoq, if you care.) When i got the package, i thought, "Wow, that would be awesome to do some renderings for a show like Hair..."
Let me digress a moment here to say that i have a lifelong love for Hair, having picked up the soundtrack in my teens, when i was particularly into 60s flower child culture thanks to a mixed tape my hippie aunt and uncle had given me. Two summers ago, i was working in NYC the summer that the Public was reviving it (the original "Shakespeare in the Park" festival production that preceeded the current Broadway run), and a pal was their painter/dyer, so i went to see it at the Delacorte with her. As a teenager, my relationship to the show was fairly straightforward, in that "yay look drugs sex peace love gayness protest singing naked wheeee" sense. As an adult, i was struck by how really sad and deluded and misguided and shitty a lot of the characters are to one another, in and amongst all the yay drugs sex peace love etc.
So, i have some larger pieces of this trippy background print cardboard that i plan to use for actual full-body renderings, but first i did these three character/face studies, to see whether my idea of using single-color markers/pens to do the majority of the sketch, followed by black marker finishing work, would actually look ok on this fairly bold (yet pastel) pattern.
I should also note that this is a case of making art with whatever you have at hand--i have found Kyle's and Eric's marker-colored renderings SO inspiring, but i neither own Design markers nor have the budget to acquire any. I did enjoy yesterday attempting to apply marker-rendering techniques to my Mrs. Linde sketch digitally, but today, i really wanted to draw with actual ink on actual paper...so i scoped around the house and found a set of highlighter pens and Sharpies in two thicknesses. Voila, i figured i'd pick something to draw that would be OK in neon. That plus the trippy background serendipity, and i'm busting out some hippies.
These sketches (clockwise from top left) show the characters Woof (pink), Hud (green), and Sheila (blue).
Woof breaks my heart, from a modern perspective; i know he's often played as a clownish character, but i think it's pretty clear from the text that he's in this really psychologically bizarre situation of being closeted, yet moving in a social sphere where he DOES have sex with men as part of the free-love everybody-bang-in-piles subculture, and still cannot actually admit that he's just plain gay. I didn't mean to be cliche by choosing pink for his marker color; i started the sketch planning to draw Jeanie instead (the girl who is in love with Claude and super-pregnant with some speed freak's baby). Then as i was drawing, i realized that i was actually drawing Woof, because he's the character i associate most with the facial expression i drew here.
Hud is sexy. Every time i've seen this show, i wish his role were larger. I probably should have scanned these rather than array them on my desk and photograph them, because for him i had a green ballpoint in addition to the marker, and there's a lot of crosshatching that just looks like it's gone. Ah well. Hud is a angry and good humored, dangerous and kind, and confrontational and laid-back, so his color is green.
Sheila is an angry young woman. She's the one who is hardcore about protesting and involved in the bizarre love triangle with Claude and Berger. I've seen this show with a ton of different casts, and i have to say, if Sheila isn't seriously hot stuff, you (meaning me) spend most of the show wishing she'd take a hike so Claude and Berger can just be gay with one another, and the love triangle's more of an irritation than a plot element. This blue Sheila is the Sheila that makes that whole part of the story work for me. I did deliberately choose blue for her (she was the first sketch i did), because it's easy to see her as mostly angry, but she's got a lot of sorrow and disappointment in her as well and i wanted to express that.
I am approaching my contributions to this blog with a "take it as it comes" attitude--while i do plan to continue exploring digital sketching and image creation, i don't want to set any restrictions or concrete plans. I want to just let inspiration carry me, and explore whatever feels most interesting each day. Today, that was characters from Hair on cardboard salvaged from the recycle bin. So be it!
How fun!!
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