Been using pencil over ink recently and I like the scratchy effect that is emerging as I render Maurice Tillet. My current stuff takes the "camera" into consideration. I'm playing with angles, framing, lighting... So, I don't know the ratio, but a significant percentage of what I draw, as I create this story, will not make it into the final product.
I am not in any hurry. Not being a hurry makes for better work. It lets me be more confident in my taking risks in the act of drawing.
Above are the three of my most recent favorite results--the drawings I do not feel the impulse to fuss with or fix; drawings I liked from the first strokes. It's weird how you can feel the pencil/ink working "right" sometimes. (Definitely not all the time). But you can tell when the muscles and eyes and mind are in sync.
For the past week, those three elements have been mostly out of sync as I have been trying to draw a few images of Caracas, Venezuela--a significant moment in Tillet's life. But everything I draw ends up too crowded, too junky, for what I am trying to do. The drawings are mountains, city buildings, a church...there is an example below...but to my eye it is totally muddy, too fussy, too much going on so, in essence, there is nothing going on in the image...totally lifeless. blah.
It feels more like a vacation photo than a possible glance in a story.
I will say I'm happy with the motion & lines in the sky, clouds and mountains...and the dark shadows of the clouds rolling over the mountains...if nothing else, doing a sketch like this teaches me what I am trying to do/say and what I am not trying to do/say.
(I left some white space in the image above, on the right, so I could insert a text box if I used the drawing.)
I prefer the kind of framing you see in the three drawings of Tillet above and the one I ending with below--the kind of camera shift and unpredictable point of view I am reaching for in my work:
As I draw this man's story--one in which his appearance is front and center in how he was treated, judged...seen...I am realizing I should try to compose it all so you never take your eyes from him--you are forced to see him.