Tag Archives: dip pen

Analogue poster : challenged by the force

Empire Strikes Back posterIt was a strange experience and I felt like a time traveller, actually drawing on paper to make a poster.

The Empire Strikes Fast is an energetic fan-pastiche stage show of the scifi classic, happening May the 4th (uh, details on the poster, if you happen to be in Wellington, New Zealand, that Monday).  I was asked for a speedy image featuring the dark lord, hand drawn and hand lettered “by tomorrow if possible”.  Challenge accepted!  I even used a dip pen, just to take it all a little further up the absurdity curve, as my slightly higher-tech technical pens proved in need of some serious maintenance after not being used for a couple of years.  Once I started scribbling it was hard to stop, although the lack of an undo key was a little hard to adjust to.

I cheated of course, working out the layout in Photoshop first, and beefing up the colouring in Photoshop afterwards, but it was rather fun going old-school for the key parts of executing an image.

Next task is creating some props for the shows, beginning with a wampa-ish creature to menace our hero.

Back to basics drawing

I’m spending a whole week drawing, with 5 days of figure-focused classes.  Day 1 was proper old school instruction on what bits of skeletons matter and which major muscles I really should remember to look for.   Day 2 was more drawing muscles and general foreshortening, days 3-5  drawing a variety of models from life.     Fun and weirdly soothing, and I suspect ultimately very helpful.