Jaco’s Random Writings

I’ve been working on that rough sketch of Alita since I got home a few hours ago. The lips were giving me a little trouble. Mostly because I’m still getting the hang of drawing lips from a side-profile perspective (and the face looking slightly downwards didn’t help). But with some drawing, redrawing, and more redrawing, I think I got it right. Alita is supposed to have rather large lips (Makes Angelina Jolie’s look like a pencil line). But I needed to get them so that they didn’t look ridiculous. At some point it looked like she had a little Hitler mustache from all the retracing of her upperlip. I spent almost 15 minutes just on her upper lip*. Anyway, here’s the practice sketch:

Well, there are a few things that would need to be improved on. The shape and scale of the head is off. The hand needs work. It needs quite a bit of work. But, that was a decent practice sketch. At least for the purpose of getting an hang of drawing Alita. Well, we’ll see if I continue with this trend for tomorrow night’s post.

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* No, that was not an intentional “Napoleon Dynamite” reference. In fact, I didn’t even realize that it was one until about 5 minutes after I typed it. But I figured I would write this just to congratulate those who read that phrase and thought: “Holy crap, that’s from Napoleon Dynamite.” Congratulations. Like me, you wish you could have the 95 minutes back that you spent watching that movie.

Well, it would appear that the lovely Miss Alita will have to wait a little. I had a long day and it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting to work on her tonight. I’ll make that a post for tomorrow night then. Tomorrow promises to be a long day too, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting to anything else either. Oh well, such is life. In the meantime, I’ve done some more work on the portrait of the random girl.

I think piece of clothing going around her left shoulder should be darker. Way darker. Something that will accent her dark hair. Yeah. Also, I need to start thinking of a background. I’m not entirely sure what I want to put there. Let’s turn to the Alchemy piece that inspired her:

In the background, I can see some robotic insects in the upper left corner. Could probably make them butterfly-like. Towards the bottom left, I see something that could be used as a marble railing or something. I could probably work some trees and natural landscape with some futuristic elements in there. Hmm, could probably put the pillars of that Skyway in the distant background. Interesting juxtaposition of futuristic and natural. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

So yeah, looks like I inadvertently took a break from the Sketch Blitz this weekend. Bummer. I knew Saturday was going to be dicey, but did not expect Sunday not to happen. Well, I came off of Saturday feeling like trash. Still feel like trash. But, just so you know, I’ve been working on the portrait some more. Also, I’ve been working on another sketch. Here’s a preview of what’s open on my desktop right now:

Yup, I’m going to be doing a little fan piece of Alita, the main character of Battle Angel Alita (or Gunnm as it is known in Japan). Actually, this isn’t the main piece. It’s a bit of a practice run to define the features of the character. I’ve been following this series for a while now and I’ve always wanted to draw Alita. Well, here I am. Drawing Alita.

Anyway, I’ll keep this short and sweet. Also, I’ve been playing around some more in Korg DS-10. And yes, it’s still fun. Tomorrow, I’ll post the practice run of my drawing of Alita as well as an updated version of the earlier portrait. Maybe even a recording of something I’ve been tweaking with in Korg DS-10 (probably not, but who knows…).

Man, this post is being put up really, really late. Well, I decided today to get Korg DS-10 for the Gameboy DS. I haven’t had too much time to play with it, but for the short period of time I’ve had to tweak around in there, it’s a Hell of a system. I mean, it’s 2 analog synthesizers, a drum machine, a virtual keyboard, and a KAOSS Pad… and it cost me $20. But the amount of sounds and music patterns you can pull out of this thing is ridiculous. The only downside is that the sound quality is questionable. However, that’s more to do with my 2 year-old DS that I bought used. I’m fairly certain the wiring to the audio jack is starting to give out. Also, once in a while, the two audio channels will just slightly go out of phase with one another, giving an interesting flanging effect… Buying a new DS has been added to a very, very long list of things I will have to eventually buy. I think I’m going to hold out until the Tegra-powered DS comes out (it’s just a rumor, but it’s an awesome rumor).

Anyway, after all that (and some moderate drinking), I got started on a sketch and this is what I have to upload tonight:

Yup, you can blame Alchemy for this one. I was at a loss as to what to draw and I started messing around in Alchemy again. After a little while, a figure emerged from the chaos. And yes, those are cybernetic implants on her wrist and middle finger. Since I am going to be getting home quite late tomorrow, I think I’ll continue working on this piece for tomorrow night’s upload. Right, good night.

I’ll be frank, I there isn’t going to be a new sketch tonight. I have to get up crazy early tomorrow, so I didn’t have time to come up with an original sketch. But fear not, I won’t just leave everyone hanging. Instead of a new sketch, you get a slightly used sketch. Remember that skyway I did? Well, I spruced it up a little bit. Here it is:

I probably screwed up the perspective horribly. Oh well. It’s really, really high up. Also, the other lane was closed for construction. They merged the traffic 300 miles back. It was horrible. Traffic was delayed for 30 minutes. Just shows you, even in the future, nothing really changes.