Month Four Complete

This should be a happy moment, four months of (almost) continual drawing.  Unfortunately, the memory of last week's failure still resonates loudly within me.  This is the first time I haven't included an exclamation mark in my month-end serenade.  Still, one indiscretion should not mar an otherwise excellent month.  I produced relatively few images, but almost all were Hall of Fame worthy.  It doesn't even make sense to compare my work this month to anything previous; the difference is just too great.

Here are my three favourite creations of the last four three weeks.

My Master of the Skies.  Someday, I'll redo this with quality paper and frame it the way it deserves.

Is this the best thing I've ever drawn?  Possibly.  Is it my favourite?  By the Goddess, yes!

This image grows on me the more I look at it -- which is often, as  I have yet to turn the page to start something new.  It's a reminder of a happier age, an age that knew not failure, an age to which I will return.

Four months.  That's 33.3% of a year.  That's over 100 days.  Assuming 20min a day, a figure I have routinely triple, that's 40hours of time invested.  Worth every minute.  Drawing, like all acts of creation, is a joy, so much so that not drawing has affected my emotional stability (I exaggerate, but only a little).  I said I would draw for a year and then take stock of my progress, to see if I should continue.  That provision is no longer necessary.  I can't imagine a future in which I don't keep drawing.  I'm a convert for life.

Week 17: Disappointment, Unhappy, Failure

There's no way to sugar-coat this: I didn't draw this week.  I have some good reasons, but they are ultimately just excuses.  Anyone can find 20min a day.  As is, I drew regularly for two days, did five minutes the third and absolutely nothing the rest of the week.  I apologize, especially to myself.  I let myself down.  I am sorry.

I have decided not to upload my limited results, as nothing was finished.

I have very high standards for myself, and when I do not meet them I become understandably disappointed.  Good will come of this, however: I will redouble my efforts and strive to make next week the best week ever.  I'll wake up an hour earlier if that is what it takes.  Whatever the cost, I will pay it.

I apologize once more.  See you next week, with some amazing art in tow.

Week 16: Going Tribal

I was busy this week. As I mentioned last post, I put my realism practice on hold for the time being, at least until I get better paper. Instead, I returned to tribal art. I made my first tribal image about two months ago, and I really enjoyed the dynamism the random shapes seemed to convey. This week I focused exclusively on this style of art, with fairly decent results, I think. Let's take a look.

At the top we have two attempts at a howling wolf, taken from this tutorial.  I drew the first one completely to the suggested instructions, and it turned out fairly sad.  I knew I could do better, so that very day I went back and tried again, this time ignoring the step-by-step.  The result was much improved, so much that I completely ignored the instructions for every other tutorial, all sketching freehand.  

The middle image is a rather strange cat, something that could be a highschool sports logo.  I'm not a huge fan of this image, either mine or the original I copied, but it was a quick drawing on a day I had little time, so I'll take it.

The final image is a full bodied wolf, an incredible image.  I'm quite proud of this one, because the source was a sped-up video, and I could only reasonable freeze the final frames and try from there.  The result is excellent.  I could improve the ear area, and I could size my drawings so they don't always leak off the page, but this remains my favourite drawing this week.

Here's a dragon.  You'll notice the bad paper here again, as my shading looks awful.  Good choice to not try to do realism drawings!  I quite like this drawing, even if it perhaps the simplest.  The head is quite detailed, and the wings are strong and vibrant.  Also, I didn't like the way he positioned the tail, so I created my own interpretation, a sort of stegosaurus-spiked version.  Not bad, but nothing special.  I'll take it.

Here's a better dragon.  Oh yes, this one worked out well.  This was the first image that took more than one day to complete; the many little wisps of curly line demanded too much patience for me to finish.  With the exception of the claw, which looks sad, I nailed this one.  Perhaps the white spaces inside the dark body could be bigger, but again, I'll take it.

Getting more and more complicated, we now have a leopard or some other medium-sized cat.  On the one hand, I made the body too fat.  On the other hand, I really like the face, with the suggestion of whiskers.  The interplay of shapes within the body was also fun and worked well, or would have had the body not been too large.  Probably my weakest attempt this week.

Finally, I drew a tribal horse.  Funny: as I was drawing this, I thought it sucked.  When I finished it, my thoughts did not improve.  But as I look at it now, it seems quite good.  The mane got cut off by the page again, but not by much, and not enough to really spoil the effect.  The one ear looks almost like a horn, but I have no problem with a unicorn instead.

I used an unprecedented five pages this week.  I only have 14 or so pages remaining in my notebook, and then I can trade it in for some decent art paper, a real sketch book.  For this reason I'll likely continue with line and figure drawing, ignoring shading for now.  I think line drawing is a big weakness currently: a number of my realistic drawings looked horrible without the hours of shading I invested.  If I can get my starting line art to be stronger, it will improve everything.  As for tribal art?  I like it, a lot, but I think I'll wait until I get some more experience before I invent my own.  Who knows what next week's theme will be, but I'm sure it will be fun!

It's Official

I've just done something I never thought I'd do.  Well, that's an exaggeration: I knew I would do it someday, but I was expecting it months and months, maybe even years, from now.  This might be one of those areas where low expectations are best, for you can then exceed them so much quicker.  Anyway, what is the glorious thing of which I speak?

I'm officially an artist.

Let me explain: my sister invited her friend over to the house, and for some reason they found there way near me and spied my latest creation, Mr Lion.  My sister's friend was very impressed.  "Wow, you drew that?"  Yes.  "That's really good.  That's really, really good."  Turning toward my sister, she says, "I never knew your brother was an artist."

Me.  An artist.  Really good.  An artist.  An ARTIST!!

I have never used that word for myself.  Search this blog, you won't find it.  I'm a trainee, developing a skill.  I do art, I practice art, but I'm not an artist yet.  Now, I'm a trained philosopher, she's a 12-year-old girl.  I probably stress exact meaning and definitions with my words more than she does.  Still, not once in my life has anyone called me an artist.  This is literally a first.

How did I celebrate?  When I came down from my joyous state, I headed over to my account on deviantart.  I'm not sure why I'm linking it, as 98% of my audience comes form there... Anyway, I went there, loaded my profile and checked the box asking 'Are you an artist?'  Boom, just like that, I consider myself an artist.

Perhaps this means nothing to you.  Again, most of the world uses words rather haphazardly.  There are people who throw paint at the sides of buildings and call themselves artists.  For most people, it's not a big deal.  For me, it's a cosmic paradigm shift.  At least one person has seen my lines on paper and deemed me worthy of the title 'artist'.  I'm no longer an outside trying to break into a creative realm.  I've been admitted into the club, so to speak.  I am an artist.

As a comparison, think back to the first time in public school called you cool (or awesome or radical or whatever the buzzword happened to be).  Do you remember that incredible feeling of acceptance, of things finally going your way?  I feel like that, only better, and bigger.  It's as if a whole medium has accepted me.  "Okay, JoeZoo, you've paid your dues.  Welcome aboard."

Confidence is everything, and my confidence has never been higher than when a young girl I don't even know said something she may not even remember.  I can't wait to see what I produce now.  Never underestimate the power of a kind word.

Week 15: RAWR!!1

First off, disclaimer: my summer hours at work have soared.  This is a good thing, I guess, in general, though it really cuts into my drawing time.  I've been averaging nearly an hour per day over the last little while, and not being able to do that hurts.  We may have to expect less quantity in each installment.

Case in point, I drew only one image this week.  It's sorta-but-not-really from Lee Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing' again.  She has the picture there, but she gives no directions on how to draw it.  None.  Worse, I don't even have the book: I returned it to the library.  I drew a quick sketch and an even quicker outline and then spent the rest of the week trying to turn this into a finished product.  I'm quite pleased with the end result, all things considered.  Here's the sketch:

I quite like this, to be honest.  I try to sketch in pen, as it largely overcomes my obsession with erasing my very first few lines because they aren't 'perfect.'  It's clearly a lion, the form is easily recognizable, the face has depth and character.  For less than five minutes of sketching, I call that a winner.  Now let's see what I turned this sketch into:

Again, standard disclaimer: ignore the wavy lines from the crappy paper, except where the wavy lines look good.  Then don't ignore them.

There are lots of little things wrong with this picture, from proportion (the mane is far too big, the ears are too close and in the wrong spot) to tonal values (the right eye is darker than the left, while the right ear is lighter than the left) to overall composition size (the mane shouldn't be half hidden in page-less land) to a whole bunch of little areas.  And yet none of that matters.  I love the final product.

(Actually, I really should have taken a scan half-way through drawing this, before I added the mane.  It's amazing how young and feminine the face looked, and equally amazing how just adding a few hints of hair turns it into a dominating, powerful male.)

I spent four days doing the face and finished the whole mane in one sitting.  Yes, I rushed that part a bit, but it still looks good.  My favourite part is the area around the nose (though it could be darker) and my least favourite is the mouth and cheeks.  I don't know why, because I think the highlights are cool and the lower mouth has awesome fur shading, but something is off.  I never bothered to add whiskers, which I think suits the image fine.

My hair work is getting better.  At least on top.  The layers, the highlights, the contrast from light to dark, I think it's the best overall job I've done yet.  I love it.  I love the whole thing, warts and all.  Maybe it's because it's my first cat in over month.  Maybe because it's my best cat ever.  Mighty lion, you have a special place in my heart.



And with that, I think I should take a break from my realism practice.  I'm worried I'm spending too much time shading and not enough time drawing form and outlines.  This is actually an interesting question: is it better to spend five days working on one big project or on five smaller ones?  Which is better for my art development?  I don't know, but then, I'm not complaining about my results so far!

Week Fourteen: 'BBoD' V, Now with Animals!

Like I promised, this week I focused on drawing animals, once again from Lee Hammond's 'Big Book of Drawing'.  The book is due back at the library on Monday, so this will be my last week with it.  Just as well, since I've pretty much exhausted her pencil-drawing section (the rest of the book deals with pencil crayons, which looks an amazing amount of fun; alas, I have no pencil crayons, and I'm not sure if the $4.99 brand sold at Wal-Mart would work for her realistic technique.  Oh well).

Also, she has about eight images of horses, four dogs, but only one cat!?  And it's not even a very good cat. That's enough to stop using the book right there.

Anyway, here's the results for the first week of July:

First we have a seal.  It looks fairly impressive, but when you break it down it's pretty easy to draw.  It's essentially a long tube, curved around the head, with an eye, nose and whiskers.  The rest is just gradient shading.  I'm really happy with the result... but is it just me, or does the facial structure faintly resemble a dog?  I keep seeing a dog out of the corner of my eye.  Weird.

Then there's the squirrel.  Here's a funny case where the scan both looks better and worse.  You'll have to take my word on this, but the tail looks really puffy and tail-like on the page.  The scan makes it more like porcupine needles.  However, it also makes the fur much better.  Like, holy crap, it looks furry.  It looks furry on the page, too, but not this good-looking.  I'll take it.  Note that I drew this squirrel in virtually one sitting, just under two hours.  I was really focused that day.

Moving on, we have this:

Pretty big step down in quality, amirite?  I spent over half an hour trying to get this falcon's (yes, it's supposed to be a falcon) head right, but it kept looking off.  I had erased and redrawn this section of paper so much I was worried I would tear a hole.  So, basically, I just roughly sketched the rest of the upper torso, roughly shaded it in and vowed to try again the next day.  And I did.  It took five days, but behold, my master of the skies.

Alternatively, this could titled, "Why You Should Use Quality Paper for Drawing."  So far, I have used a spiral-bound notebook for all my drawings.  I have about ten left over from my school days, and I figured it was a cheap and easy way to keep all my drawings together, rather than fumbling with a binder for instance. I was right, but the emphasis was really on 'cheap.'

When you look at the page, you don't see 95% of those wavy lines.  There is some distortion around the black wing tips, which sucks.  Mostly, the paper scans like crap now, and where you see the wavy streaks it is very hard to properly shade.  The page's curve seems to resist the pencil.  This is incredibly frustrating, as an otherwise fantastic drawing, covering roughly five days, was effectively ruined before it even began, all because of the paper.  Well, not ruined; it looks damn good hanging on my wall.

My notebook is nearly full, so I think I'll keep going and fill it up.  My goal was always to have a series of books that I could flip through to see my progress.  Now I'll just be sure to fork out some money and get a quality artistic sketch book.  I tried fiddling with my scanner's settings in an attempt to make the picture look better, and I came up with this:

 This is much darker but less wavy.  The dark actually looks real good, but it took a small eternity to shade my bird a darkish grey, mostly because of the paper.  Anyway, enough complaining, let's praise the drawing!

The bird looks excellent.  After my rough sketch, I was able to get the head and beak area fairly decent.  The head doesn't completely line up with the neck/body, but it's still quite good.  I'm very pleased with the body; I think this is my best use of the eraser for pulling out highlights so far.  I like both wings, though for different reasons.  The cut-off one has a nice interplay of light and dark, and I think I pulled it off very well.  The other wing I like solely because I spent three days creating it, pouring in the details, and each day it looked better and better.  The wavy lines here really spoil the shading I tried to achieve.

My shading skill continues to improve.  The tones blend closer into each other, leaving less suddenly lighter/darker areas.  The seal may be the best example so far, but the whole right wing is darn good, too.


And with that, I finish with 'The Big Book of Drawing'.  I spent five weeks going through it, and these have undoubtedly been the best five weeks of my short artistic life.  I don't know what I will draw next.  My library has another book by Hammond, mostly on drawing full human figures, but I'm still in an animal-mood.  I might just give my realism a break and work on cartoons again; I haven't done any in a while, and they have the added benefit of taking less time, in general.  Hmm, you'll just have to wait until next week to find out!

Thanks once more, BBoD!  You'll always have a special place in my artistic history!