Today's exercise was trying to use my whole arm to draw, or to draw from my shoulder. I recently went back to
The Drawing Board, and I was listening to some advice that they were giving out, and a lot of it was talking about drawing with your arm rather than your wrist, which allows your work to flow more smoothly and also makes it easier to draw for a long time, because your arm is stronger than your wrist. This I know is true, so I decided to try to train myself toward using my arm rather than my wrist. It's SO HARD. But I'm trying.
Another piece of advice from the thread that really hit me was from a poster named emma. He/she said: " Be inspired instead of depressed or threatened when you look at other peoples' art." and that really hits me, because before I started a comic I was afraid that my art would suck and that everyone would hate it. (It did, and they did, but I improved) I was constantly looking at the professionality of other comics and worrying. Not to mention the people I know! But lately it's become less of a big deal. Specifically, when I look at
Kat's art, I feel like drawing fanart of her awesome character designs and her candy-colors and I think she's awesome and want to contribute to what she's doing.
I'm still a little anxious when I see
Teri and
Nicole's too-awesome art... But now I can appreciate that I have strengths that neither of them have. I just have to work on both my strengths and my weaknesses and let good art be my spur, not my bit. Or something.
Onto the art!

Hehe. He can't skateboard. This is a picture from
Ping's manchest tutorial. I was thinking about and looking at it when I drew this. I like it, I think it has strengths, but I think that the area around the abdominal muscles is much too dark. It makes him look like he's wearing a turtle shell, instead of just being hard-bodied. This is something I can easily fix, though... I just have to mute the lines and maybe add some highlights into my sketch. The background was just a little add on. He does have a minor case of Escher legs, because the way that his right leg bends is not well-defined. I'll have to fix that as well. I like the expression on his face, and the idea that he's about to board off that half-pipe and have a serious meeting with the ground. I'm evil that way.

This lady was a heavy experiment with arm lines. Not her arms, of course, mine. I drew her and her face expression and was dismayed by the extra space, so I gave her something to look at. I like the shading onder her breasts, and her haircut. I am a little bit iffy on her eyes, since they don't exactly correspond, a problem I often have. Liefeld eye, I like to call it... Though I do like the wing and the way she's looking at it... It's as if inside her head she's saying, "Oh great... What am I going to do about this?" I think the wing could have been a bit more three-dimensional, but it was a quick add-on, so I'm pretty proud of it.
I wonder if anyone else is ever going to come here. Ah well, a good way to critique my own art, at the very least.