6 Little Drawings Became a Gateway to a New Creative Approach

Back in the late spring and early summer I had it in my mind I was going to totally change how I was making my art: instead of drawing my images with pencil on paper, inking them with brushes and pen nibs, and then scanning them into Photoshop to add digital color, I planned to go fully analog – I'd paint the colors on canvas or wood panel, then add the ink lines over the top. (I shared an early result of that effort in my post from June.)

Well...it didn't quite go the way I planned. At all.

In fact, a few months later I ended up with an entirely digital workflow. BUT, something wonderful happened in the process.

I started making small drawings (8.5" x 5.5") as a guide to help me with the paintings, and instead they evolved into their own thing. And because they were small, I was able to quickly cycle through ideas and experiment with some new things, which in turn led to a few really fun changes that I've taken back to my bigger drawings.

From early May until the end of July I penciled and inked six of these little guys, and seeing the progress from where I began to where I ended up is kind of crazy. Check out this evolution.

I'll start with the first three. These really felt like warm-ups to shake off the rust and I knew they probably wouldn't be anything I'd include in my portfolio, but I had an amazingly fun time drawing them and they proved to be the launching pad for some much better stuff to follow.

You'll notice on these that they don't have a ton of detail. I was using the same tools and process as I've been doing for years on my 14" x 17" drawings but because these are literally 1/5 the size, they look waaayyy chunkier and appear to have fatter outlines. (The part about the fatter outlines turned out to be a big deal, but more on that in a second.)

Also, notice that these have simple, two-dimensional backgrounds. In the case of the last two, they're just silhouettes of kind of abstract, futuristic, industrial stuff.

Then, this one happened, and it was a small but significant turning point

You can see I opened up the background from flat, abstract shapes into a three-dimensional environment with linear perspective. However, I was still drawing quickly and a bit roughly and using the same drawing tools as always. So it still has a similar vibe. But I liked this one a lot and felt I was ready to start pushing myself into some new creative territory.

So I went into the next two with a more serious mindset, and three huge things happened with them:

1. I tightened up my linear perspective and really pushed myself to create more complex buildings than I have before.

2. I started using a mechanical pencil with a finer point to add tighter hatching lines and a greater level of overall detail. Incorporating the fatter outlines I liked from the earlier drawings turned out to be essential here for creating visual separation between objects.

3. And the last change was that I inked these digitally on an iPad instead of on paper. That gave me a safety net during the inking process and allowed me to erase and re-draw the lines until I felt I had them really dialed in.

Now, with these two in mind, go back and look at the first few drawings – remembering that these are all drawn on the same 8.5" x 5.5" paper.

Pretty wild.

What began as simple little drawings for practice paintings turned into some of the most detailed drawings I've ever made.

I was optimistic that I would be able to carry that level of detail back to my larger drawings, and with two new ones basically done at this point, I'm happy to say that has been even more true than I hoped.

Aside from denser hatching lines and a greater level of detail, I feel like the inclusion of linear perspective marks a turning point in my art. I had only just begun dabbling with that on Tension and Reverie (see below), but this deeper shift has allowed me to start creating some fully three-dimensional environments on my new art.

Tension and Reverie, ink on Bristol, 14" x 17"

But I'm getting ahead of myself on that.

I'll get into detail on the creative process for some of these smaller drawings, beginning with one I'm calling Memories of a Timeless Expanse. (Update: you can read about the drawing and ink process for it here.)

Thanks for being here.

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I share process videos, sketches, and behind-the-scenes work as new pieces take shape. If you'd like to see the next stages of this world as they’re built, you can find me here:

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