Workstudy: Inks V

This is the last of it, and hopefully to some degree the best. That's not for me to say though. The challenge here was to take two painters and adapt their paintings to line. J.C. Leyendecker's work has always called to me as an illustrator. His graphic approach to handling paint looked like it could be easily converted.
Here's what I learned: J.C. Leyendecker was a bad-ass graphic designer, and he contructed his figures and shading right down to the light source on buttons with that kind of mindset. There is never a wasted stroke. That being said, I could have stood to leave out some of the detail or group more of the shadow and light. Guys like Michael Schwab, an illustrator big in the 80s would have been a bit too extreme in his simplification I'm sure. The point being there's the laws of diminishing returns and in finding that is the art. I had a lot of fun on this one and it turned out pretty much what's been in my head for the last 10 years. I just wish I could draw comics this way.

I found this gem of a book on Gil Elvegren, the most popular pinup artist of the 30s,40s, and 50s and beyond. In it was a pencil drawing of a painting that he later did. I was going to try and convert a painting, but instead thought, "why not just ink the drawing?" and so I did.
Here's what I learned: Do not try to improve on perfection. In doing so you will quickly realize your own short-comings. Any little misinterpretation of line, form or shadow in the smallest increment throws the whole thing off. That's why I believe I failed at this piece. It doesn't even compare to the original. Heck even when I tightened up the drawing to make it clear to ink, it looked better. Sometimes though, even your best day can be your worst.

I want to thank everyone for the kind words and checking out the work. It's fun sharing these experiments and I hope it inspires others to do the same.

Hopefully next time I can start into painting workstudies.

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