Draw every day!

2006-02-25T07:45:00.001-06:00

She-Hulk! She was supposed to be posted on August 19th, but not. I was messing with my Prismacolors and since I don't have a skintone, I decided to try to draw She-Hulk. I needed to blend more, I think.

Ah, another pic! This is of my Cyberpunk character, codename Smoke. She's a bodyguard! And she has a cybernetic arm and leg. You can't tell, because they're totally natural-looking. My favorite part of this pic is the hair.

2006-02-25T07:45:00.000-06:00

Peeekchures. This is from a BAJILLION years ago, when I was drawing specifically for this blog. It was meant to be posted on the 12th of August. WHAT?

I've been doing a crummy job of Drawing Every Day, haven't I? Well, I've been drawing, but not posting. Anyway, I'll catch up, and then I'll start drawing more. Yay!

This particular drawing is my interpretation of Tex Avery's Red character from the Red Riding Hood series of cartoons. I'm sure you've seen it.

July 31st: My WHOLE arm

2005-08-03T02:46:00.000-05:00

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.

July 30th: The Beginning

2005-08-01T22:30:00.000-05:00

So here I go. Since I can't always get in to scan, post, blog, etc, every single day, I'm going to run on a few day's lag. My first draw every day drawing is this one, drawn for the SA forums on July 29th, colored over July 30th early morning and posted on the forum.

I sketched it in pencil and liked it, so I inked it, and eventually colored it on the computer. The peoples on the thread commented that they liked the color, and one pointed out that Karolina's right knee is a bit off. It was only after they said that that I noticed, which is a bit of a bad job on my part.

Karolina in general in this picture I think was a failure, because her neck is a bit disconnected from her body and her face looks a bit odd from its angle. It looks very two dimensional and the neck doesn't connect correctly. Nico looks okay, but I dislike the way her right hand is flattened, and I could really do better than that. I think her body minus the arms has weight and depth, but her hair is also pretty flat. It seems like having three dimensions is something my pictures need.

The coloring job is not bad, though I wish I had made more of the fact that Karolina is the light source. My coloring jobs usually have the problem of being a bit too non-extreme, the differences between my light and shadow are often much too subtle. Hmm.. That's also something I ought to work with.

For the most part in this journal, I'll be posting sketches, to try to work on things from the ground up. I have a couple sketches from the 31st all ready, and right now I'm working on today's sketch(es).

Well, here goes.

2005-07-31T21:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I didn't just create a livejournal for this.. Maybe it's the allure of having a new type of journal to mess around with, and not having to leave anonymous comments anymore. Ah well.

Later on, I'll be posting pictures and stuff to help me improve my art. Or something.

(runaway)