Detlef Jumpertz

Iíve had a fascination with drawing a member of the cephalopod species for quite a while now. Over the past 18 months Iíve noticed that a number of the blogs which I visit have featured drawings of squid and octopus. The depictions range from the whimsy of Brandon Reeseís Octopus Bouquet; the malevolent vortex of Mad Megís tentacles; the wide-eyed stare of Leontine Mayís bundle of fun; and of course the surrealistic header of Inkfinger (which did have a great squid, but now has a cool bat/squid hybrid for the month of October). They have in some way all been responsible for whetting my drawing appetite and joining the Cephalopod Club.

Conceptually speaking

Given the lack of real life, or for that matter dead, specimens within my vicinity Iíve had to resort to photographic references (besides Iím not sure the formaldehyde fumes are too good for me). After doing a massive google image trawl (pun intended) I really was none the wiser ñ many images (some really beautiful) but none that really met the criteria of being a bit novel and royalty/copyright free (or low cost anyway) etc.

Alas, I had just about given up the ghost when by accident I got me hooks into an image that I could use which, for a modest fee, provided me with the rights to do an artistic interpretation. Mind you that took 3 weeks of negotiation with our premier government science agency to come to mutually acceptable licence terms.

The real beauty for me is that compositionally I donít have to do a lot of thinking about this drawing - because I usually fret over this part of the drawing process. I suppose doing all that googling meant that Iíd done enough conceptualisation anyway and had a fair idea of what I wanted.

Again itíll be a large drawing again, but will just be the Goulds (aka Arrow) squid ñ nothing else, no background, no faux water/current, just 100% squid! Iím hoping that the arc like and flowing lines will provide sufficient interest ñ enough to capture the interest of the viewer at least.

This rough layout sketch gives a feel for it.

I quite often do these rough tiny sketches to help me visualise and see whether the major forms of the drawing will fit harmoniously on the paper.

I see this drawing as being a bit more abstract than usual for me. I can already envisage a lot of rubbing to get the skin right (coupled with lots of ìdotî work to get the skin markings right), some fiddly work on the suckers, and some attention to detail to get a nice sheen on the eyeball. All that is ahead of me, the mark-up awaits.

Where to begin

I began the mark-up and having thought I had scaled everything up nicely, I stepped back saw that instead I had fucked up rather badly and the whole image wasn't going to fit on the page!!!! This is what comes with taking too long a break between drawings (note to self draw more often, and maybe do some warm-up exercises before plunging straight in). Truthfully, I couldn't be bothered erasing all the line work for the mark-up so I just turned the paper over and started drawing on the other side.

Things panned out much better, that other side was full of bad karma, this side is full of good karma and there was a nice flow happening with the freehand marking-up going swimmingly. Some nice curves to this drawing, should be an interesting composition.

I decided to start with the eye. Squid have ginormous eyes. It's such a huge eye that is a focal point of the drawing and I think I needed to get this right before I could proceed with the other elements of the squid. I also like to think that I can get into the soul of this creature through this approach - that's if squid have a soul. Besides it was another chance to submit another entry for the Everyday Matters eye challenge.

For the eyeball I used 8B and 4B pencils and gradually blended with a torchon. Any different gradation would have been too even a blend, and would've taken away from the sheen I want the eye ball to have. I will leave relevant white space around the eyeball before starting the eye socket. I'm OK with where we're up to at the moment - I think I've got a feel for the subject, and I think the eye when complete will project some personality into "Charlie". Without that personality this could quite easily turn into a sterile technical drawing - hopefully this drawing will be a bit more alive than that.



PS. This squid entry and the subsequent ones dedicated to Janey who seems to like reading these types of entries. Otherwise I wouldn't be posting these trade secret snippets.

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