Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Using paper and cardboard models as reference

Voor mijn verhaaltje van vorige week wilde ik twee leeuwen tekenen. Dus heb ik van de gelegenheid gebruik gemaakt om met modelletjes te maken en die als referentie te gebruiken voor de leeuwen-tekening.

David Peterson van de Mouseguard serie is hierin voor mij een grote inspiratie. Hij is een geweldige modellenmaker en ik vind het meer dan interessant om te horen hoe hij de wereld rond zijn verhalen opbouwt. Maar ik ben het meeste blij mee, dat hij zo graag zijn ideeën zo graag wil delen.


I knew I wanted to draw some lions for last weeks picture, and I took the opportunity to experiment with making paper and cardboard models and using them as reference for a picture. 

David Peterson from the Mouseguard books does that a lot, and he is a huge inspiration to me, in several ways. For making models and for his thoughts on world building. And definitely for being so generous as to share all of it.


First off, after last weeks post, my parents sent a photo of me (in the front) and two of my sibling on a lion-statue.
This must have been about twenty years ago, when we were on holiday in Luxembourg with our family.
A few weeks earlier I had made a simple bridge-model out of cardboard.
I decided to try it out for this picture.
It took me just over an hour to make this Aslan paper-model,
you can see that I made it in kind of a hurry.
Instead of using a lot of time on making another lion, I took two pictures of just the one lion.
I pitched my digital camera atop on a coffee-cup just at the right hight and angle.
My camera has a timer-function that takes two pictures with a few seconds inbetween.
Those are the two smaller photo´s at the top.
In those few seconds I had to quick and place the lion on the other side of the bridge.
It is quite easy to piece both the photo´s together in Photoshop,
and end up with the reference picture at the bottom.
Once the composition was done and the lions were stoically pitted against each other, I sketched the final drawing, straight from the screen. Drawing form the monitor I use the help of a grid, it´s a fast way to keep to the proportions. In the bottom-corner you can see that I started the coat of arms of my birthplace Gramsbergen, but that one did not make it into the final. In the background, I started to draw some likes to make it look interesting,  but that idea got pulled aswell.
And the final of the lions on the bridge. Awww, can I say that I think this one looks a bit boring, nothing´s really happening. Boring is bad. So the morning after I decided to put both a Dutch and Norwegian flag in the background, look here, I think it helped a little bit.

Ik heb er in ieder geval veel plezier aan gehad om de brug en de leeuw in elkaar te zetten, en om met mijn camera te spelen. Mijn modellen zien er nog niet uit als die David Peterson, maar daar werk ik in ieder geval wel naar toe, elke keer wanneer ik zijn blog bekijk.

So, I had a lot of fun making the models and playing with my digital camera. My models don´t look like David Peterson´s yet, but I am slowly working towards that. At least in my own mind.


I really like the Shirt designs that the Salvation Army is having.

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