I Heart Robots

Inspired by a scene that I recently saw in the movie Real Steel, I made this new piece in Procreate on the iPad. I loved seeing the connection between a boy and his robot. Not wanting to copy the scene directly, I tried to capture the moment in my own style, with my own characters. Clearly, I need to work on my lighting technique to help lock in the emotion, but I still had fun making this.

I often find myself writing or saying, "I've been drawing too many robots." or "I'm taking a break from robots." because, frankly, I draw too many robots. The fact is, I love drawing robots. The biggest reason is that I'm horrible at rendering reality, but I love trying to create a narrative with expression and emotion. Robots can be posed or given subtle expressions to imply these things, without having to really struggle with nailing a realistic capture.

Fortunately, for me, other folks feel the same way about drawing robots. I'm about to 'dip my ink' into another challenge that really speaks to me: March of Robots. This is a new art challenge from DaCosta Bayley a.k.a. @chocolatesoop  - which is certainly up my alley. I need to draw 31 robots in the 31 days of March. I'm certainly up to the challenge, but I've set my goals low. I probably won't stick to the prompt list, this time, and I may not get to all 31. I'm just happy to have an excuse to draw more robots.

Rained Out - A Kid's Narrative on a Missed Launch

A few weeks ago, NASA and SpaceX was to launch the first manned rocket from U.S. soil, in over 9 years. The country's interest in space travel was renewed as astronauts Bob and Doug were patiently waiting for the final countdown. Unfortunately, the launch had to be postponed due to inclement weather. The conditions had to be perfect, and that day, they weren't.

As with most, I understood the decision to postpone, but was still disappointed. I could imagine Bob and Doug were even more let down. I decided to capture the narrative of this frustration in a sketch. Wanting to rush something out to connect with the moment, I did a quick and rough sketch of the astronauts as kids with a toy rocket, getting rained out.

I wasn't happy with how it turned out. I was trying to articulate a more innocent disappointment, that perhaps a couple of childhood friends would have felt, getting rained out on their homemade rocket flight. So I made another attempt. This time, I took some time and started with a thumbnail sketch.

Then brought it into my iPad and made my new drawing in Procreate.

So, I'm Trying Digital

I was able to get hold of a current model, iPad (Generation 7) and an Apple Pencil (first generation) for work stuff, so I decided to try sketching with it. Keep in mind, I've tried this on a much older iPad using my fingers or a crappy stylus, and was completely disappointed with the lag time and lack of accuracy. However, I've read that the hardware and software has gotten a lot better—closing the gap between digital and analog sketching.

Although my new iPad is the base model of the current lineup, it's the perfect device for dipping your toes into the digital sketch pool. No need to invest in the expensive, super fast, huge screen iPad Pro - until you are sure this is a world you want to be in. The speed is pretty fast, with almost no lag time between the Apple Pencil and the lines drawn.

The Apple Pencil is pretty impressive with both accuracy and sensitivity. The iPad screen is still pretty slick and very not like paper. I've installed a new, matte finished screen protector, which should help with that.

Of course, after doing an extensive dive on what the best iPad sketching software, I found that Procreate made it to the top of most reviewer's lists. So, I dropped the whole $10 on the App and loaded it up. I'll do a more extensive review, once I get more familiar with it. I have to say, from what I've experienced, Procreate is both intuitive and robust—enough to satisfy the needs of a beginner and a seasoned professional.

The other issue I had with digital is file management. Many of the rough sketches that I had done on that previous iPad are lost. Both Procreate and the iPad, make it easy to share and export my art to devices off the iPad, in universal formats that are compatible with legacy graphics software from Adobe. I'm also making nice inkjet prints of my sketches, to save in a sketch portfolio—analog proof of my digital work.

Here are my first two sketches from Procreate  The fist was completely digital to test out the sketch features. For the second, I thought I would start out with an analog sketch (from a digital photo), take a pic of that sketch and import it into Procreate. With layers, it was easy to use my analog sketch as a reference to finish my digital piece. Very meta.

Overall, I'm pretty addicted to the ease of having as many undo's as I need to get my lines right. It does take away some of the organic nature of the mistakes made in analog, but I can live with that for now.