Welcome To The Jungle - Pencil Drawing

The Spirit's Notes: This was perhaps one of my more complex drawings which I pencilled back in November of 1998. The final color art was not completed until April or May of 1999. My concept for this drawing was to create a more serious piece of art, with developed characters and a defined setting. I wanted to let my imagination run wild and see where it lead me, and incorporate a science fiction theme to my subject. Have you ever noticed that I rarely draw male figures in my art? For me to draw a male, is similar to drawing a monster or alien, as there is nothing attractive in drawing it. The alien monsters in this artwork reflect my view on drawing men. Their is a time and a place to draw everything, you just need to pick your places. There is also much creative anger being vented and expressed within this chaotic scene, which kind of paralleled some of the things going on in my life at that time. So, when creating art for art's sake, let your emotions dictate the subject of your work at that given moment in time, and then you will be true to yourself.

One can hide many flaws within a pencil drawings (because of the areas of grey), and many of them may not even be evident to you at the time. But try to set your pencil drawing up to give yourself as much visual information as you can, as a guideline, so that when you begin inking your art, you can show as much confidence in your line work as possible. Likewise, avoid lines which convey self-doubt. I suppose when I begin writing about inking in the future I can expand more upon that. With pencil drawings, there can be many tones and shades of grey. As you prepare your pencils for the inking stage you must keep that in mind, as inevitably you will need to ink those areas of grey, and the question remains, how will you do it? That way, the more defined lines you can interpret from your pencils, the better off you will be later on. Of course, areas of dark-darks can be easily interpreted as shapes of solid black with ink, and lines are simply that too, black lines. But areas of grey shading in your pencils need to be defined, as that definition will determine your upcoming inking approach or technique(s). My inking techniques were not perfect nor very confident on this piece at the time of it's creation, and the above words that I am telling you are lessons I have learned over time through experience. I am still continually working to improve my technical delivery with confident line work and color applications within my art to this very day. Art is not whipped off, it is a time consuming process with no short cuts.