14. Hairstyle and Fashion Notes

Detail from loose sketch collection

 Before Pinterest was invented I had to have a way to keep cool ideas that I found/thought of, and so I created pages in my sketch book that were basically "boards" of ideas. Below is the next page in my sketch book, which was a board of hair ideas to use in future.

One of my favorite things to do in college was find cool books in the library. I loved photography, old maps, and of course, fashion. When flipping through the stacks of fashion books I found I would sketch cool ideas on a loose sheet of paper, since I rarely had my sketchbook on me. Below is one of those loose sheets, so technically it is a bit anachronistic but I thought it fit well in this post.

13. Celtic Girl

This sketch was a design for a doll costume I made. I had some cool Celtic buttons and a plaid I wanted to use. Thus the various ways of tying the shawl. 

I love Celtic culture, especially Celtic music. Enya and Loreena Mckennit are my soundtracks for creativity, and in college during finals week I would check out the complete works of The Chieftans to accompany my hours in the library writing research papers. When the first Lord of the Rings soundtracks (which seems heavily influenced by Celtic music) came out I loved it so much I only allowed myself to listen to it on Mondays so I wouldn't ruin it by over doing it. 

How about you? Do you have an artist or genre that gets your creativity flowing?

12. Nausicaa Tribute

Thanks to having inked over it, this image took a few seconds to clean up, as opposed to the hours I spent on the last one :) This sketch again has a lot of Japanese and Miyazaki based influence. I really liked Nausicaa's glider I guess...

11. Spirited Away

As mentioned earlier I was heavily influenced by Miyazaki's films, and I loved Sen's outfit in Spirited Away so I drew this sketch to determine how it worked.

The inspiration. 

The complete sketch

This picture required a lot of editing, and I think I am finally discovering the best way to work with these sketches in Gimp. Little by little it is coming together. Below you can see the original scan. I had inked over the sketch on the other side of the page and it bled through, plus some discoloration from the scanning process. I think it cleaned up pretty well!

Pre-editing

The next sketch should be easier because I inked over it. This post gives you a bit of a sneak peak! 

10. Arabian Nights

I think this sketch was an idea for a doll outfit. I had a scrap that looked like it came from the middle east, but I only had a little bit of it, so I was trying to figure out how to use it to greatest advantage.
One interesting thing about this sketch is that I appear to have gone back afterwards and shortened her legs. If you look you can see the poorly erased tips of her shoes and the original pillow placement. She used to be very tall indeed.
I believe I ended up making this doll, so possibly some day I will update this post with a photo of it, if I ever dig it out of my parents attic.

9. Fairy

I really don't remember much about this one. It does mark the first appearance of bare feet! I guess that used up so much energy I never bothered with arms...

8. Harimad Sol

This sketch was an idea of what the clothes Harry wears in The Blue Sword  would look like. It is also the first appearance of actual eyes! 

I did not feel confident enough to draw cats paws or horses, thus the lack of feet on the cat and the very faint outlines of horses in the back.

I have to admit this is not my favorite sketch, so I don't have much else to say about it. I did experiment with a different way of scanning and processing it in gimp, which worked out better for this particular sketch. Well, on to the next one!

7. Glider

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

-Helen Keller

This sketch was inspired by Nausicaa, the Miyazaki film. I lived in Japan for a while as a kid and was introduced to Miyazaki's films there, and I loved his work. He is probably the most major influence on my drawing style. I also loved and owned the soundtracks to his films, and one day I decided that the best way to learn to draw like him was to copy him, so I sat down with the CD case for the Princess Mononoke soundtrack and copied Ashitaka and San off of it. After that I felt much more confident about faces.

I liked this sketch so much after I did it I later painted a larger version as a poster for my room and put the quote from Helen Keller on it.  I agree that life should be an adventure, but I realize more and more that the improbably epic, small things in life usually end up being the greatest adventure. So it was interesting to me to find the following as I checked the source for the first quote:

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. 

- Attributed to Helen Keller

It surprised me because I would have said Helen accomplished great and noble things in her life, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a bachelors degree is no small feat in my mind. But I think our own lives rarely feel epic to us. How about you? Do you see epic-ness in your own life? Would others?