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!