Hugo’s Blog

I've been trying to do more on-the-spot life drawing lately. My greatest obstacle in doing this is my concern that somebody's going to give me shit about drawing them, but so far nobody's noticed or, if they have, nobody's cared. Of course, it helps that I tend to choose subjects who are either sleeping or are completely transfixed by whatever electronic device they happen to be playing with.
Most of these were drawn while standing in very shaky, rumbly subway train cars, so the line tends to go where it wants.

I continute to play around with watercolors from time to time, with little success. One of the problems I'm having is that my colors always come out way too pale and washed out-looking, leaving me to really up the contrast in Photoshop. Ridiculous as it sounds, this always makes me feel like I'm "cheating." This is probably just a symptom of my being an old fart, but it just doesn't seem like I'm representing a drawing honestly if I have to post it with so much "post-production" manipulation. Should I say this is "watercolor and digital"? Anyway, here are some recent attempts...








I also did a self-portrait in which I came out looking very anxious. Which I am, so I guess it's accurate...



(The plant really was there. It's not just an affectation/Lucien Freud rip-off)






Finally, I did a painting of my friend's cat. Awwwww.....

Yes, I've been re-reading The Young Witches

Mr. Paleo also had some advice for improving the drawing I posted a couple of weeks ago, and this time I was smart and followed it. Here's that drawing with the background and some other areas made darker...



And here's a sketch...



(Those twin creatures in the corners don't really have anything to do with anything; the lines are just the ink run-off from putting a point on the brush, later retooled into something or other)

The original sketch for this drawing was much more involved and detailed when I laid it out about six months ago and threw it on my "to-be-finished" pile. Back then, the references were already ancient, and now that the equivalent of aeons in internet pop-culture time have passed, the chances of anybody getting the joke grow ever more remote, while the aforementioned pile grows ever larger. All of which has prompted me to just do it really quick and simple and get it out there already. So here it is.



Thanks to David Paleo, who took the time to provide insightful advice (as always) on the composition of the original sketch, all of which I subsequently and assholishly ignored in slapping together this crappy version.
And speaking of David Paleo and ancient internet artifacts, he also hipped me to the existence of this photo of me with Victor "Bald Eagles" Cayro, which appeared online about 10 years after it was taken, which would be sometime after the Y2K collapse but before 9/11, as will be apparent from the flagrant "September 10th" attitude conveyed by our poses.

Yes, a drawing...



Also, a sketch...

and I love Georges Pichard's work, so you can imagine how I feel about this...

Still putzing around with the color experiments. This was done with color inks...



Lately I've been trying to work with actual watercolor, which is a real bitch to control. Shit just wants to go everywhere, yo...



as evidenced by this awful drawing of the baby from Eraserhead. I fucked the mouth up and couldn't rescue it, for the life of me. Now it's just a random mutant, I imagine...or perhaps it could be the baby that appeared in the cheapo Italian rip-off of Eraserhead