Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

How to fuckin' draw shit: for noobs

While I am also a noob, you may look at me as a kind of Alpha noob. So , here we go.

Paper
Very fucking important. While copy paper can take an astonishing amount of abuse when you think about it, for quality pencils you should use better paper. 80lb drawing paper is what I use for sketches , and if I have more serious business in mind, I use cheapish Strathmore bristol board. I don't know what ply it is. Its thin, but resistant . If you're gonna use a lot of black ink, its best to use bristol. You're not gonna go around soaking that 80lb drawn paper in marker colors either, so consider that. Colored pencils are fine for 80lb drawing paper. For watercolors, use at least 120 gsm or whatever,I don't know, I'm not getting up to check. The point is, if you use 90 lb watercolor paper, its going to buckle on you unless you do some fancy taping crap or something, and I can't speak upon that. If you're gonna use a lot of soft pencil, or crayons, colored pencil, or pastel , don't use smooth Bristol board, probably use vellum or paper with a slight tooth. Cold press watercolor paper works fine for charcoal, I guess. Cold press is gonna have a tooth.

Pencils
Pencils, hard to soft. The number before the thing indicates how hard or soft. H is hard. B is soft. F is for fine . I don’t use it. The pencils I use the most are 4h, 2h, H, HB , 2b and 5b. Of those, I use the 4h and 2h and HB most.

Pens
I use felt tip pens. I don't like micron pens because they're too fragile. Same reason I like pens with no smaller than a .4mm tip. I currently have art-liner shachihata brand pens , but from what I've read, the Faber Castell pitt pens are the best. I've found the shachihata art liners to be sturdier ( and cheaper ) than a micron. The nib is stronger . The ink is probably cheaper, but I don't care. It doesn't bleed on me. I keep a .4 and a .8 .I also like to have a brush pen and a ball point pen, and a 1mm marker . These serve various purposes. The ball point is for quickly sort of sketching out areas of shading. I find its more dynamic that way. Then I use the brush pen or the marker on the outlines of the parts of the crap I want to stand out. The brush pen gives the most dynamic line, and its convenient because you can make a line thinner than the .4 , or thicker than the .8, and seamlessly vary the width of line. Breathes a lot of life into an ink drawing. In this case, were talking about a Pigma FB ( ' fine brush ' ) . Why don't I use a nib or a real ink brush ? That's because I'm not allowed to since I'm in prison.

Also, I want to highly recommend the morpho anatomy books by Michel Lauricella. They’re compact but also packed with an unbelievable amount of useful visual information, with a minimum of verbiage. What words he does say are extremely useful .

Drawing
Your drawing is usually gonna be better if you know what you're gonna do before you start. I like to brainstorm sketch a lot, too. If you can, its a good idea to do several bullshit thumbnail sketches or just drawings on cheap paper to give you ideas, then you take that idea , and you play with it a little maybe, find the version you want. You don't have to plan it out completely, just having a little more than a vague idea helps a lot.

I always start a drawing or painting with my lightest pencil, a 4h, so sometimes I just draw with this to get an idea of what I want to do, since its so light I don’t have to commit to anything. I love my 4h. I'll keep doing this and lines I'm more sure of I'll run over with it more times to make it darker than the others. At this stage, I draw really fast and don’t worry if its right. When I'm done with that, I'll come in with a darker pencil . I might erase some of the lines if they're distracting. I use the darker pencil until I can see the drawing enough to where if I come in with a pen, I'm not gonna have to make any huge guesses as to where to ink. You don't want your pencils to be so tight that inking is mechanical , but you don't want them to be so loose that its out of your depth to bring it home in the ink stage. This depends on your skill level. You can also start with a very thin pen if you want and work up to thicker if you're unsure , but its good to use the momentum to your advantage. I recommend going fast and taking risks. Before i ink, if there's a lot of deep shadow, I'm likely to come in with an even softer pencil and darken the areas I think I'm gonna end up putting hatching or black.
When I hatch, I hatch like I'm painting , erring on the side of leaving it too light. Then , I go again and hatch more until it looks right . Its important to hatch in the right direction for effect. The direction depends on the desired effect. Towards the ground, for example , can make a figure look heavier.

Quick anatomy thing -
The top of the head to the base of the chin is about the length of the chin to the base of the solar plexus. The elbow with the arms resting hangs level with bottom of the rib-cage about, and the wrist is roughly level with the pubis. An adult person is probably 7 heads tall, a heroic character might be 8 heads tall, and my figures are usually 6.5 heads tall. When you make someone taller or shorter proportionately, for some weird reason, you should add or remove most of the extra length from their legs, and take less from the torso.

Oh yea. When you buy supplies, just get the cheapest functional version. You'd be surprised what can be accomplished even with tools designed for children. I literally spent two whole years drawing with only golf pencils.

Elisa Carlson