Month Three Complete!

Another month completed!  Incredible.  This artistic journey has lasted nearly 100 days, which is about 95 days more than I thought possibly.  We're starting to see improvement, and big improvement in some areas.  I sometimes feel there's an artist hiding somewhere inside me, as opposed to before, where I thought I didn't have an artistic bone in my body.

Normally here is where I compare something I drew previously to a recent example to highlight said improvement.  However, because I spent all month working on faces, and my previous work was rather laughable, I thought I'd do something different.  Here are all my sketches.  Yes, all of them.  No, I don't do this a lot.  Nothing is dated, but you can still see noticeable improvement, even in these 30sec to two-minute doodles. 

Here are my earliest sketches.  I know the resolution sucks, but so do most of these doodles, so it evens out.  If you are unsure what a particular image is supposed to be, don't ask, because I probably don't know either.
Time frame: roughly the first five weeks.

Sketches are getting better.  At the top we have hands that look fairly hand-like, especially for sketches.  We also have what may be my best Joey ever, done in a fraction of the time.  (There's also a tiger, which shows that I haven't magically become a master sketcher yet!)  At the bottom we have four quick attempts at a beautiful cougar face, which also happens to double as my computer wallpaper.  Spoiler alert: expect to see a full drawing of this soon.

This is what inspired me to do this sketch comparison.  On the left, a cartoon with guidelines still visible, trying to get a face in the right proportions.  On the right, another sketch, this one from 'Amazing Faces' and is no better or worse than anything else I tried from that book.  In the centre, something I drew in two minutes yesterday night.  I find it very compelling: it's a very old face, or the rough pen lines certainly suggest this.  Drawn with value tones even though I'm using pen.  The cheeks are actually contoured, and you can tell where the face ends even without an outline.  The proportions are spot on even without guidelines.  Holy crap, what an improvement in sketching!

If you look closer at some of these, you might go blind, so I don't recommend it.  If you don't heed that warning, you may recognize some of my finished drawings.  In virtually every case, I did the finished drawing first, liked it, and then tried to see if I could sketch a likeness of it.  I think that's called working backwards.  Oh well, let's admire the improvement, and let's also bask in the glory of my proudest achievements again this month!

Unsurprisingly, all of my portraits made it into the Hall of Fame.  If I keep making works like these, I might have to become more selective... but that's not the hardest of problems, is it?  This draw everyday challenge has been marvellous.  I look forward to it everyday.  The improvements were so fast, so rapid, so unexpected, I feel like I'm living in a dream.  Let's see where this dream takes me in the next few months!

Week Thirteen: 'BBoD' IV, Presenting Mr Lincoln

I only drew one picture this week.  Does that make me a bad person?  Hardly.  I decided to do one more portrait from Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing.'  Little did I know that it would eat away nearly ten hours of my life.  Were those hours wasted?  I'll let you be the judge.

I think I say this every week, but this is the best thing I've ever drawn.  Ever.  Do you know who this is?  He's a former President and, according to a movie, an even better vampire slayer.  It's Honest Abe Lincoln.  Or at least his head.  After ten hours, I wasn't about to start drawing his neck and shoulders.  I think it looks fine as is.

True story: this didn't look like Lincoln for the first five or so hours.  That got me scared.  I did the outline and the eyes, and it looked like a really young person.  I did the nose and the mouth, still a really young person.  Adding the beard made it a young person with an unusually scruffy beard.  I began to despair.  Maybe I really had wasted a week.  Then I lightly shaded his cheeks and Mr Lincoln suddenly appeared before me.

Talk about a eureka moment.

I could barely believe it.  The light, minimal shading around the cheeks turned this from a collection of facial features into a real, recognizable person.  It was so stunning, so instant, I didn't touch his cheeks again.  I tried to touch everything else up, but the cheeks I left alone.  This means his one nostril remained rather small, but I'll take it.

I'm so pleased with this I've uploaded it to my account on Deviant Art, which will basically serve as the Hall of Fame for my Hall of Fame, the best of the best.


And with that, good-bye portraits, see ya faces.  In a couple weeks I might try again, but not for awhile.  People are not my passion.  I want to draw animals, and dragons, and fantasy creations, and maybe landscapes ... people and portraits rank fairly low on the totem pole.  Nest week (more like all of next month), I'll get started on that.

Week Twelve: 'BBoD' III, with lots of Hair

Another week of following Lee Hammond's advice in her book, "The Big Book of Drawing."  This week focused on several different hair-styles, much to my pleasure.  Drawing hair, and having it turn out well, is a real good feeling.  Let's take a look.

First we have a cool pony-tail.  This was my first and best attempt at hair.  It took a long time but never felt difficult.  Just lots and lots of lines, then drawing over those lines with more lines, and then 15-min later you have the one section done.  Highlights are getting better.  I drew a fairly good face as well, but my ear somehow ended up flipped the wrong way.  Weird.

The bottom hair-style is supposed to be wavy/curly, but it mostly looks like a mess.  I'll admit that I rushed this one.  Part of the reason is that Hammond's step-by-step approach starts slacking off at this point in the book.  Paraphrased: Step one, draw the outline.  Step two, do a bit of shading.  Step three, everything's magically done.  As is, you need to approach each wave as a small, separate entity, and when you complete them all everything will fall into place.  I lacked patience or something, and the rest is, um, I don't know what.  I do like the highlights at the top, though.  Yeah for some positives!

More hair!  This is perhaps my personal favourite, straight hair, the kind that flows in the wind so nicely.  It turned out okay, but I know what I did wrong.  The middle section, the anti-highlight as it were, doesn't curve in the same direction as the bottom-part, spoiling some of the effect.  I should have turned the paper around, allowing the natural curve of the wrist to flow in the proper direction.  Oh well, still decent.

The bottom one is your standard office haircut, I guess, parted off to one side.  Again, the instructions basically amounted to, "Draw an outline and let your innate artistic talent do the rest."  Notice that the ear is much better this time!  The left side feels a little flat.  The right side is better, though the front feels much thinner compared to her final output.  On the plus-side, I think my highlights are the best I've ever done.  I'll accept that.

Here's my portrait this week!  Can you guess who it is?  If you can, then I must have done a good job.  I'll give you a moment to look it over.  Here's a hint: it's George Washington.  I only finished this a few hours ago, so my thoughts won't likely be the most objective, but here goes.

It does mostly look like Mr Washington, though I don't know how or why.  This was a much harder drawing than the girl from last week, which kind of shows, but it was also a challenge I mostly met.  Eyes were hard again, but even though the one eye looks off in a slightly different direction I'm happy.  I actually really like the left one.  The nose, oddly, I struggled with the most.  I was never fully happy with it, but I had done too much of the rest of the face to alter it, and I didn't want to start completely over.  The face is a little too round and the chin is a little too short, but these are relatively minor.

Took three days, at about five hours total, give or take.  The clothing was a last minute decision, and I'm happy I drew it: only took about 15min, and it looks much better than just a floating head on paper.  Lastly, look at the bottom corner: I've updated my art signature.  It's now a JZ intertwined, with the 'roof' of the 'J' doubling as the 'roof' of the 'Z'.  I think it's clever.


This just about wraps up the portrait section of the 'Big Book of Drawing', which is good.  I'm thrilled at my progress, but faces every day for a month is starting to get a little dull.  I may or may not do one more portrait, and then it's onto animals!  Yeah!  Even if not, I'll just skip to the animal section.  I think this is the longest I've gone without drawing a cat, and that needs to be rectified.

Week Eleven: 'Big Book of Drawing' II, Plus My First Portrait!

In non-art news, I took part in several karate demonstrations this past week.  This is significant, as the 'threat' of these shows demanded concentration and practice, which took some time away from other pursuits, namely drawing.  Well, with that out of the way, I could again focus on drawing this week, and focus I did.  Here's my second week of working from Lee Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing.'

Last week I did noses and mouths.  Here, both together, plus some teeth.  The teeth were interesting; at the time I thought they sucked, but now I kinda like them.  Most attempts at teeth like like white bricks or tic-tacs, but these curve enough to suggest real teeth.  The nose and mouth are less good, at least the nose.  Well, it's supposed to be on a slight angle, but I ended up drawing the mouth straight.  The mouth looks great.  The nose, well, I really struggled.  Oh well.

Time for some eyes.  This almost looks like a before and after comparison, but not so: the left image was a basic outline, and then the other went into more detail.  I don't care about the left one.  The right one is fantastic.  Interestingly, as I was drawing it, I thought it looked freaky -- and then I added the eyelashes, and suddenly everything came together.  It actually looks incredible.  Unbelievable, even.  So much texture.  Only  the eyebrow serves as a negative, but I can live with that.

Now for some ears, the final facial feature.  You know what?  Ears are pretty freaky looking.  Here are two attempts.  First of, wow, I need to learn how to use my erasure for highlights better.  The right ear's 'highlight' likes more like an incomplete area.  The other ear, though, does look pretty decent, even if the one lob arcs in a weird way.  Can't complain about either.  (Though maybe I should complain about my photoshop skills. Why there's a patch of paper just floating in-between the two images is beyond me, and I made it ...)

Finally, I then took all the lessons I've learned over the last two weeks and put them together, creating the following:

By all that's holy, it's perfect.  Well, no, it's not perfect, but if you compare it to my first attempts at faces, comparatively it's perfect.  Before I kill this with praise, I should point out my mistakes: the one pupil is smaller than the other one; the face is slightly longer and out of proportion on the far side; the shadows could be darker and more even.  Honestly, that's all I see.  Time for praise!

For starters, it looks like a real face.  You can tell it's a person.  Also, it looks startlingly close to the reference image.  As in, the girl in question would recognize herself if she looked at this.  That's unbelievable. I thought it would take years to reach that point.  I spent about 20min trying to get the eyes right; I have a habit of drawing one great and then the other off in some respect, usually too big or a different shape or lower on the face.  These work.

And the hair!  Do you see the hair?  It doesn't look like scribbles!  It looks like hair.  Holy cow.  I still need more practice with lifting out highlights (actually, I need to find a youtube video or something to demonstrate, because I doubt I'm doing it right...), but I did create the rough effect I was looking for.  All in all, it only took two days to get this baby done, or about 3-4 hours.  I planned on making WIP again for this, my first portrait, but when I was 70% done after the first sitting, it didn't make much sense.


Once again, my goal is to capture reality on paper, graphite realism.  This book has helped me so much in so little time.  I'm astounded, really.  Time to push through, forge ahead and hone these new-found skills even more.  Unless I am unable to renew this book, next week should have even more portraits and other realistic goods.  I can hardly wait.

Week Ten: Lee Hammond's 'Big Book Of Drawing' I

After my Lion King binge last week, I went to the library (one of my favourite pastimes) and looked around for art books that specialized in pencil drawings.  I found several, but I went with Lee Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing'.  It essentially gathers all the main points of her other books and places them in one cover, often verbatum.  I would know, as the library had several books of hers there.

Anyway, this book focuses on drawing realistically with pencil.  Hammond relies on using graphs to get accurate line drawings, a step I've ignored.  Sure, graphs work, but that won't help me draw when I don't have a graph, which is always.  However, I can follow all the other techniques, and here's my first stab at it.

The first lesson was a sphere.  I begrudgingly did it, thinking such an exercise simply, but I actually had fun doing it.  At first, it looked like a circle, but then it really took shape, pun intended, and a 3D object started popping out.  Interestingly, this scan leaves a bright stab of light through the middle, but it still looks good.  I like it.

Here are some noses.  Earlier, I declared my undying enemity towards the nose, but these weren't that bad.  By knowing how to shade the sphere, I should now know how to shade the round nostril areas!  Or at least in theory.  The one on the left isn't anything special, but I really like the one on the right.  This is easily my best attempt at producing a rounded structure, and the shading is quite nice.

From noses we move to the mouth.  I struggled with mouths before, but Hammond lists two tips: don't outline the lips, ever, and the shape of the upper lip is a squished M.  Those two helped immeasurably.  The first mouth is angled slightly to the side and was hard to draw.  Mostly it was hard to accurately do the highlights in the bottom lip.  I found I have very little control of my kneaded erasure, and much more practice is needed!

The second mouth looks great.  The shading is consistent, the highlighting is better, and the little flaps of skin just above it really complete the image.

Finally, I present to you this image.  Tell me, what do you think of this nose?
 

Not bad, eh?  Thing is, I don't see a nose at all.  I can only see an evil hat.  As in, the black nostril area is a pair of eyes, the rounded nostril area is the brim and the bridge serves as a cone, a sort of wizard's hat.  This isn't entirely my fault: the more I look at the reference picture, the more I see a hat with dark eyes.  Maybe that's a good way of seeing the nose: an evil hat plastered in the middle of the face.


Once more, my goal is to eventually draw hyper-realistically.  This book will show me how to get started along that path.  None of these images looked cartoony.  As far as realism goes, especially concerning facial features, this is the best I've ever done.  I'll be sticking with this book for the coming weeks, until I finish it or run out of renewals, so expect less Lion King and X-Men and much more realistic awesomeness this month.

The Making of Nala

From May 29 to June 3, I directed all of my artistic energy towards one goal.  At the time, I didn't realize it would take so long.  After my first day, I decided to make scans of my work in progress, and here they are. Note that if you click on an image, it will be bigger, and you can use the mouse-wheel to quickly zoom from one to another, almost making an animation effect.

First I sketched the basic outlines of everything.  This was surprisingly quick, given I've never worked at this scale before.  The lines here are very light; I had to adjust the brightness on the scan so it would show up.  I figured I could correct any mis-proportioned places later.  As it is, I got everything pretty close on my first time.  Hardest part here were the eyes.

I made the conscious choice to just make the background black.  It makes the foreground pop out more, and it saves me from trying to shade more complex background stuff.  Note that it's supposed to be all black: imperfections in the paper show up in the scan, giving it that stripy-look.  When you hold the page tight, it looks better.  Still, lesson learned: don't use cheap paper for creating masterpieces.

For some reason this scan showed up really light; I must have done something wrong with the settings.  Here I've started to shade in the far left rocks and water, as well as lots of work on the main platform.  It's hard to see, but basically I'm putting in the darkest areas first and drawing the lighter stuff around it.  Even harder to see is the reflection in the water, which took me a small eternity to draw.  I didn't realize how hard water was to draw until right then!

This is better quality.  The background is now set, but most of the work was on the main platform.  I had a lot of trouble with it.  It's supposed to be a mix between showing the grain of the rock as well as reflections from the water.  The small, left-most side looks good; the other side I'm less happy with, but I didn't know how to fix it.  Live and learn.

Here is the most pain-staking step, shading in the water region.  I had no idea how to show the ripples in the water.  I just shaded well around it, to save it for later, and when I was done, it looked like ripples!  Success by avoiding!  I decided here to make all the reflections lighter than the things being reflected.  This created a succesful illusion, I think, and made it easier for me.  Likewise with my decision to simplify the reflection; I had little chance or completely recreating the platform details, and why would I want to?  It would just steal focus from Nala's eyes.

Here's the end product of my labour of love.  The darkest black is her eyes, right in the centre.  Again, blame the poor paper and/or the scanner for making her shading look splotchy.  She looks much better on the page.  Oddly enough, the hardest finishing touch was figuring out how to sign it.  I've never made a full picture before.  Do I fully sign and date it?  Just sign it?  Just date it?  On the front or the back?  Do I need a special art signature, different from my own?  In the end, I just went with initials and date, but I reserve the right to change my artistic signature in the future.

Random Thoughts
After the third day, I began to grow extremely worried about some chance disaster.  What if I spilled my water on it?  Or worse, if I make a silly mistake with my pencil and leave a line indelibly across the middle of the page?  I got a little paranoid, not eating food anywhere near it, using my pencil extra softly and washing my hands almost religiously on the half-hour.  Working on projects that take weeks to finish must take a lot of mental fortitude!

I think the image as a whole is very good, especially for my humble standards.  Besides the platform shading, which isn't that bad, I only have issue with the big ear and left-eye region, which are both slightly off.  Not terrible, not picture ruining, but enough to make me frown when I study the area.  Again, though, considering my inexperience, this is amazing.

Trying to finish this was tough.  I mean actually finish it, complete it, put it down and say job well done.  I kept coming back, trying to add little details, soften out one more texture, define a particular region just a little more.  I knew that once I signed my name it would be done, game over, no more editing, and after a solid week that was hard to do.  Picasso's quip, "I don't finish my paintings, I abandon them" has some real truth to it!  It's going to feel weird to wake up tomorrow and draw something that isn't this picture.

Finally, a note on the date.  When written in numerical form, most people either do month/day/year (ie, June 3rd, 2012 would be 6/3/2012) or day/month/year (3/6/2012).  I find neither optimal.  With the first option, why is the day, the smallest unit of time, in the middle of two bigger units?  This doesn't seem very logical; reason suggests either go from smallest to large or vice versa.  The problem with the second option is it is horribly inefficient.  I've had to go through receipts over a multi-year period, and I needed to read the receipts backwards to fully organize them.  That sucked.

This leaves the last method, my preferred method: year, month, date.  This is highly logical: the year is often the most important piece of information, and the one that changes the least often, and it is listed first, followed by the month, the next biggest unit, followed by the day.  June 3rd is thus rendered 2012/06/03, with or without the placeholder zeroes.  This date isn't ambigious (seeing 6/3/12 makes you wonder if it's June 3 or March 6) and it is very easy to organize or compare different dates.  In six years, say, if I needed to organize all my art, I sort first by the first number, then by the second number, and then by the third.  Logic!  Clarity!  Simple!  Easy!  I know very few people who use this system, but it's the best.  Spread the word.

Week Nine: Lion King Time

There's no point in hiding it: I love the Lion King.  I think it's an awesome movie, probably my favourite movie of all time.  I've certainly watched it more than anything else.  I still have most of the script memorized.  When I first started this drawing challenge, I knew I'd be drawing cartoon lions a lot.  This week, it's the only thing I've been drawing.  I think it worked out.

Here we have two young Simbas and a Nala.  We already met Nala during my Month In Review a few days ago, and I think she's beautiful.  I now realize that my reference picture has a slant that my version completely ignores, but it doesn't tarnish my work at all.  The two others were drawn from tutorials found here and here.  (Nala is completely my own work, only a reference)  All three are decent: you can clearly tell who each is supposed to be.

Now, you may be wondering why only half the page is drawn on.  If not, I'll give you a moment to start wondering.  Moment over.  I decided I wanted to draw this:

Without doubt, this is from my favourite scene in the movie.  For those who haven't watched TLK in awhile, this is the Can You Feel The Love Tonight sequence.  Now, I wanted to draw the entire image, not just Nala.  Without the water or the reflection or the ripples or the rocky edge, much of the magic is spoiled.  I needed a full page.  I present you my finished work.

I'm biased: I absolutely love it.  This is my first composition, the first time I've drawn a complete scene, not just a hand or a body or a pose.  It took somewhere between 5-8 hours.  It's likely closer to eight, but that seems a long time.  I started Tuesday, working about an hour each day.  Where did the time go?  I spent maybe 45min to sketch the basic outlines, and evidently the last seven or so hours were various forms of shading.  Hey, I never said I was fast.  (Incidently, that's way more than just 20min a day!)

The background is black night instead of the jungle flora.  Mostly, I didn't think I could make the jungle plants stand out with only shades of grey.  I also think the black makes everything else stand out more.  The other part of the background, the rocks, came out quite nice.

I have several scans of this drawing as a Work in Progress (WIP), which I'll upload later, as well as more of my thoughts on this creation.  My first composition!  I'm so proud.