Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

I was walking to dinner with some people at a conference in DC and saw some graffiti that said "Kabbalah sucks!" It seemed rather random, as there wasn't much other graffiti around and there wasn't a lot of apparent Kabbalah around either (none I could see). But that got me thinking about a Kabbalah restaurant. And with all the numerology, what would happen if you ordered the Special of the Day and it turned out to be an unlucky number or linked or unlinked to your name in some way. Clearly, I know almost nothing about Kabbalah, but the concept amused me anyway. The others there agreed that perhaps 3 other people in the world might also feel that way (none of them were present though).

And thus came this sketch. Hand penciled and inked, then scanned and colored, shaded, and lettered. At some point I want to try more inking in Illustrator as the lines are all rather thick. It was just that I was more inspired away from my computer at the time. The original sketch was much wider and included another table or so and a waiter that had just dropped the tray he was carrying, in shock and horror. Backgrounds just take a long time for me to do and distract from the foreground action/dialog/concept. So that got cut. I thought about sketching the waiter in on the left side, but it would have been tough and he would have obsurred the couple to the left and I wanted their facial reactions. The trick was to convey that it's a restaurant with a lot of stuff going on without having to draw it all.

The middle table was intentionally empty, as I knew that's where the speech balloon would go, so there wouldn't be a lot to lose. I guess they cleaned that table and just haven't reset it yet (perhaps that's the plates the waiter was carrying).

The other problem about the thick lines is that it's hard to see details. You can get the general idea about the hand positions of the people in the foreground and the people up at the right, but it's too hard to make out the waiter's hand...you can kind of guess he's writing, but can't tell he's holding a pen. Similarly, if there weren't color cues it'd be hard to tell the legs of the couple to the left and the woman to the right is wearing a green dress. And then getting colors right was tricky. I wanted the metal onthe chairs to be golden, but then realized it clashed with the yellow dress, or worse, blended in with it. So I went with a darker color (not my favorite) and got lazy and decided the chair seats were the same color (I didn't want pink seats for some reason). And the woman in the foreground was supposed to be just tan, to contrast the pasty white of the clueless, business-suit guy ordering, but I couldn't find a color I liked so I just went with brown. I considered using the Muppet style "all colors of the rainbow" but that would've been distracting too. Also, I forgot to clean up the stray line on the chair in the foreground. Oh well.

A rather long analysis of a "quick sketch" but it must be done on occasion.