Week One: Baby Steps

Here we go, my first week of drawings.  In a few months we can all look back at these and laugh, I'm sure.  That said, it went much better than I thought.  I was expecting mutant blobs.  Instead, I got, well, whatever you call these.

First we have dolphins.  I didn't know what to draw, and I only had a blue pen, so I figured I should do something naturally blue.  I had a little dolphin figurine which I sketched.  This figurine is actually broken in half, so I couldn't see how to draw the tail: I disguised this with the waves.  All in all, a success.  You can tell they are dolphins, which is more than I thought.

Next we have my stool.  I use it as a stand for my still-life stuff, so I might as well draw it as well.  It looks flimsy, almost made of jello.  The perspective is also way wrong.  Definitely my worst result, but again, at least you can roughly tell it's a stool.

Then we have bananas.  This is my favourite picture of the week.  It took me about two minutes to sketch the outline, and I didn't know what to do after that.  I then spent 20min adding the little shading details and whatnot.  It worked.  Without lie, they may be the best things I've ever drawn, ever.

The image on the left is supposed to be a katana in its case.  Instead, it looks like a nerf sword.  I was so impressed with my shading of the banana that I tried the same thing here.  It looked decent, and so I used the same cross-hatching over the entire sword.  This, unfortunately, looks bland and spoils the effect.  Oh well, live and learn.

The second image is a water bottle.  If you know the Nestle Pure Life brand of water, you know their bottles are pretty funky looking.  I was pretty satisfied with this result.

The big image is, or was, my cat.  He died several years ago, and I only have one photograph of him.  If we compare the two images, I did a decent job with the form, though the head is a little too round and the mouth is a little too high. I couldn't really see the cat anatomy, which shows up in the drawing.  My first attemps at fur also largely failed.  I'll prolly try this one again.  (note: you can see my stool in the background, for those who care)

The image to the side is the katana unsheathed. The proportions are better, but it still looks off, more of a knife than sword.  I'm sure there's a good reason I drew it point facing down, but I can't recall off the top of my head.

The final image on the bottom is my new pencil. My artistic friend recommended the mechanical kinds, as they never need sharpening, refills are inexpensive and they always have the same size (as opposed to the constant shrinkage of normal pencils).  It made sense to me, and here it is.  Doesn't it look lovely?

I'll admit, I had a lot more fun doing this than I thought possible. I waited a week before investing any money in this project, mostly because I figured I'd give it up after the second day, but no. Of course, $5.00 for two pencils plus lead refills is hardly breaking the bank. Anyway, one week down, fifty-one to go.