Week Five: Superheroes, Go!

Good news!  I got a part-time job.  This is, in general, always better than the alternative.  The only drawback is less drawing time.  On three days this week I had to struggle hard to manage just 20min of sketching.  The other four days, though, were fairly productive.  Let's take a look:

Wow, X-Men! I went to the library and grabbed a few 'How-to-draw' books. I grabbed X-Men because they were a childhood icon and I need to draw full bodies at some point. It worked fairly well, I think. You'll notice that all of the drawings are outlined in black-pen. This is because of the huge amount of guidelines that needed to be erased, and it's easier to use pen and erase everything else than to manipulate an eraser around the lines I want to keep.

Wolverine looks good. His arms in the right-image aren't in proportion, but oh well. He looks much better in the second image, his head the only unfortunate part. There are LOTS of details here. Each drawing took 2+ hours, spread out across multiple sittings.

The final image is my first abandoned project. I spent three days trying to turn this into something good, and I just never liked it from the beginning. Rather than forcing myself to complete something I already dislike, I gave up. It felt good.

We've already met Joey before.  We also have Storm, again from X-Men.  You'll notice that the darks on her are very dark compared to my normal.  This is because I invested in some soft pencils.  That's about $15 now invested in this year-long challenge.  You'll also notice, if you look carefully, some pen slips.  I was very tired when I tried to outline Storm with my pen, and I accidentally inked a few spots that shouldn't have been.  Oh well.

At the bottom we have three separate anatomy studies.  The scan here doesn't show up that great.  Apparently studying anatomy is really important for artists.  I did this and didn't get too much out of it.  Then I drew a giant, bulging bicep.  Why?  Because if I ever draw my own portrait, I need to know how to make giant muscles.  Haha!  Joking.  Maybe.


Some decent work this week.  I find I'm erasing a lot less, which must be a sign of improvement.  It took five weeks, but I feel more confident when I sit down, pencil in hand.  I had more fun with superheroes than faces or animals, so I'll probably try them for another week and see what happens.  See you in seven days.