Anthony Zierhut Storyboard Artist, Animatic Artist, Pre-vis Artist, Sketch Blog
This one’s hot off the press. We just had dinner together about an hour ago at the Thai restaurant across from the studio (Jack came with me to work today). We were listening to Daniel Johnston‘s Jump/Yip Music, a recent discovery for both of us. Jack was also telling me about his latest obsession, a Japanese manga comic series called Naruto.
I walk past this famous old beauty every day on the way to my current office at the studio. She’s been parked between a large storage bin and some potted plants near the loading dock across from my building for months, if not years. What a great vehicle to sketch. I may try for another, more unconventional angle later.
I drew this at dinner tonight. This is the last sketch on the last page of my moleskine sketchbook. I threw some gray marker on it, and was surprised to learn that the flimsy, slick moleskine paper loves marker. I’ve been limiting these sketches to the usual pencil and smudge tool, but now I almost want a do-over.
Anyway, keeping in the spirit of my new year’s resolution, I’m completing things left incomplete. So instead of buying a new sketchbook, as I would normally do, I’m finding old, half-finished sketchbooks from the past and finishing them! I’ve found a sketchbook that my wife actually stitched together and bound from scratch and gave to me for a gift back a few years ago. It seems to be from 1999, mostly. Just to illustrate this, my daughter Lily, seen in the middle of the sketch above from this evening, is shown below how she appeared to me in 1999 in a sketch from my new/old (or is it old/new?) sketchbook.
I drew only in ink in those days, mostly fountain pen. These days I’m liking pencil: less fighting, more flow. So here’s a new sketch in the old book from this evening just to kick things off:
Joan put Strathmore drawing paper in this one, and I really like how it takes the 6b pencil. I have no idea whether anyone else finds any of this interesting, but it’s amusing to me, so hey…
I was emptying out some old drawers and found a piece of paper floating around in there — on the other side was this sketch. It’s my old friend Inga the cat from 1986. This was back when I lived in a large house in Pasadena with four or five current and ex Art Center students. Back then I was sketching a lot with india ink washes, making good use of those artsy splatters. Feels like two lifetimes ago. It’s funny finding something like this.
Work has been so crazy lately that I haven’t had two minutes to sketch anything new. Maybe I’ll get a moment this weekend.
