Hand Painted Zine, Part 11 (Tetromino Wolf)
Well, it has been a year since I started this project but I think I have a few more pages to go before all the drawings can be packaged into a zine.
I had this vague goal of making one zine per year but sometimes things take longer than you wish. The rough mission for the current project was to do it using watercolors on paper while being a bit more loose with the drawings.
Though my desire for looseness kind of morphed into an exploration of grids and patterns. I'm not mad about it, but it feels like it went into many different directions.
The illustration for this month is no exception. I started thinking I wanted to recreate the cover from Overgrown Legend, the black and white zine I made in 2019:
After sketching a few things I landed on a sort of blocky isometric wolf head. Here is the first rough sketch:
The basic shape was very blocky and plain. By doodling shapes on the grid I landed on some tetrominoes for decoration which you might recognize from the game Tetris.
It seemed fun so I went with it, I even changed the eyes from crosses to the "T" tetromino and added the shapes on the top left corner.
Like on part 9 previously, I used Hexels to clean the drawing and try out some colors. This is what it looks like with the grid on:
And without the grid:
Brief detour into picoCAD
At this point the drawing was almost ready to be painted but I decided to experiment with it a little bit. I feel like these explorations with grids and patterns were going to cross the realm of pixel art at some point, so I spent some time 3D modeling my blocky wolf with the hope of getting some ideas for the watercolor version.
I've been playing with this neat lo-fi 3D modeling program called picoCAD which lets you create very simple models with a minimal palette, very minimal controls and a fun retro vibe. This is what the model looks like:
It was fun but I don't think it really informed the final drawing. I had this wild vision of grabbing a frame from the pixelated 3D model an making a watercolor of that, but I ended up sticking with the cleaner isometric drawing.
I did get these fun GIFs of my model though 😜:
Final Painting
I enjoy that conversation between the the digital versions and the analog one. The latter almost feels like a weathered copy of the original:
I don't know if it is the dorky face of the character or the color palette but this one feels particularly playful.
Other Updates:
The face postcards I mentioned last time are now on the Nucleus Gallery website: postcard 1, postcard 2, postcard 3 and postcard 4.
Also the "Architectural Monsters" are now being shown and are available for purchase at the Kswick Gallery in Los Angeles.
All your support this year has meant a lot to me! Thank you! I really hope some of these projects and explorations have brought you a little curiosity and perhaps even a little joy into your life.
Wishing you all the best for the coming year! ❤️
Federico.