| DUBLIN December 2003 |
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I took a trip to Dublin as most of you may know from my BLOG and while I waited in the terminal I had some time to kill. I had determined on this trip I would do some drawing. In fact, I had specifically assigned myself the task to get some work done on finishing some verses from Bob Dylan's 115th Dream. But I didn't feel quite up to tackling that task just now. I needed some "warm-up" first. So, I decided to "draw the terminal" based on the sounds and sights I had seen so far... |
I really saw none of these people in the terminal. I was feeling a bit self-conscious about this whole "sketch artist in the airport" role, so I just bent my head down and started to draw. I started with the "quasi-modo" character and the "phillip marlow bum" exchanging "You LOOKing at ME?!?" glances left of center. Partly cuz it's somewhat of a self protrait of my self-conciousness and partly cuz I really didn't know what I was going to illustrate -- I just needed to begin. I added "Quasi's wife" as the closest thing to a portrait of anyone in this airport. This Irish "farmer's wife" was sitting right across from me. But it don't look anything like her but only in innocent spirit. And suddenly all the other characters started coming forward from the voices, accents and languages I was hearing around me. Especially the two cellphone characters in the foreground, there were many people who seem to be talking to themselves til I looked to see them "holding their ears...." |
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This is the sketch I did on the six hour flight to Boston from Dublin via Shannon.... with time out to eat lunch and watch a movie and I think I actually started this in the terminal in Dublin, as I remember more or less dozing during the flight from there to Shannon and I know it was already "under way" when I took it out to complete over the Atlantic in my trip back to Eastern Standard Time... |
I really don't know all the "twenty-odd" verses to this song verbatim. And so there's an error. "She invited me to her HOUSE" not just "her room" as I had written... |
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After my "warmp-up" drawing in the terminal and once I boarded the plane and we got underway, I started with my "assignment" to do some verses to Bob Dylan's 115th Dream. There was one false start when I went to illustrate Dylan as the main character in a style that's more in line with my detailed caricature style. I realized quite quickly that this was gunna suck as it was gunna be so hard to keep this lively and animated and VERY difficult to render with any efficiency balancing this Entertainment Weeklymagazine-as-a-drawing-table in my lap on this flight! Once I came up with a verse that seemed a "good start" with an immediate visual, I was very pleased with my more cartoony and simple caricature of the Dylan character... |
This is actually the last line of the verse. The verse begins with the Dylan character "busting outta jail and walking past this cow" and this is where this drawing picks up. I was pleased with being able to incorporate lines from the song into actual dialogue in cartoon speech balloons (the verse rendered on my trip back -- described and shown in the previous entry above -- was all narative as most of the verses are). This is also where I first noticed continuity issues. The verses that follow have "Dylan" losing his hat and have someone "robbing" his boots. The second to the last verse has "him" "hawking" his sailor suit "to get a coin to flip" so I realized I'm going to need to define this character some more before proceeding. |
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Character definition didn't begin til it was time to go home. I got to the airport with plenty of time before my departure, so I used this time to start some sketches based on the verse completed on the way out. Once again with my Entertainment Weeklydrawing table in my lap, I started to "define Dylan"... |
(Refer to the illustration on the left) The first sketch was the one dead center with the sailor hat. The second, just to the right of it. I had thought about putting Dylan in a sailor suit like Popeye with the flap collar, but liked the stripped shirt and "pirate-look" in the original sketches, so stayed with it. Dylan will always be "profile-3/4" view so will have an earring in whatever ear's shown. I also kept with the torn pants and swashbuckled belt. And of course added the boots, too. In the second sketch, I added the bandana around the neck and stayed with that through the rest of the sketches. I needed to try some action ("running" -- sketch 3) and expression and gesture ("angered asking WHAT?" -- sketch 4). The cigarette and the "classic" Dylan eyebrows in sketch four prompted the more detailed sketch 5 at top. That's when I pulled a new sheet of paper and rendered the character sketch on the right. I figured I could go from simple cartoony character to more detailed rendering as I saw fit in this illustrated song. (This is actually something Mark Martin and I talked about doing for our characters in our Rock n' Roll Heaven collaboration). Go To NEXT PAGE of DUBLIN 2003. |