Week 23: I'm Back!

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.  It also evidently makes it more productive.  After taking a few artistic days off, coupled with a less intensive work schedule, I exploded artistic juices virtually every day.  If that metaphor wasn't graphic enough for you, take a look at these:

To start with, I finished off my Tigress from last time.  The shading turned out real well, and I fixed the nose/mouth area as best as I could.  Her body ended up looking a little stocky, though, which kinda irks me. Tigress shouldn't be wide.  Anyway, kudos to my shirt shading: getting the flowery images to turn out took a lot of patience.

THAT'S BETTER!  Not so wide anymore!  Okay, so I happened to watch Kung Fu Panda 2, and this scene has always stuck with me for some reason.  Actually, it was really hard to draw because, as a night scene, all the colours are muted, making it hard to separate them with just shades of grey.  I think I did alright in that regard.

Proportions are great, shading is fairly consistent, I made some attempts at shadows, heck, even the paper cooperated.  More than anything, I feel I captured the feel of this scene.  Tigress perhaps looks a little calmer, a little happier than normal, but that's okay.  When it comes to foreshortening, this is the standard I'll now have to hold myself to.  One of my new top five favourite drawings.  (Other people seem to think so too: it's currently my most favourited and commented section on DA.)

This is Auron, perhaps my favourite character from one of my favourite games, Final Fantasy X.  I don't play games much anymore, but I still play FFX every year or so.  I won't lie, this is my second favourite drawing, just missing out on Mr Lion.  Maybe if I did the hair better.  I don't like anime-style hair, but I wanted to keep his hairstyle, so I did a mixture of realism and anime.  Didn't turn out too bad, but I'll need more practice to really make it work.

This is the first realistic cat I've tried to draw in a long time, depending if you want to count Mr Lion or not. It didn't turn out super-great, but it still has potential. The problem I had was the very long fur, which disguises the contours of the face. It was hard to tell where the face ended, or even where the mouth begins and ends. In fact, that mouth took ages to get, and I never fully got it. If I want to draw cats, and I do, I'll have to study that mouth region more.

I know I said I would take a break from trying realistic images, but, well, it's too much fun.

Now here's a pair of simple images. The one is sort of a tattoo, while the other is pure cartoon. Both got cut off by my incredible page-planning skills. The sleeping-cat like thing I'm not terribly happy with. I figured after all the difficult images I drew this week, this should be easy. It wasn't. I've noticed I have a hard time with curved lines, particularly S-curves. That is, I can free-hand a straight line fairly accurately compared to my reference, but curves end up going way off track, and I need to redo them over and over. This is interesting, because in high school mathematics I was very good at eye-balling angles without a protractor. Then again, most angles are formed from straight lines ...

Anyway, the other image turned out much better. She has an almost saucy expression, the quintessential spoiled feline princess. I didn't have room to finish the body, but the head was always the main draw. I drew it and I'm happy. Proof that I can draw simple pictures!

Finally, over at DA, Naftalina25 drew a picture for me. For me! How incredibly sweet. HERE it is. I mentioned that Espeon and Articuno were among my favourite Pokemon. Yes, I liked Pokemon. We all did as children. Still think it was one of the greatest concepts for a game ever; too bad Nintendo has dropped the ball on MMORPG.

Anyway, after receiving this gift, I thought I'd draw my own version. First we have Cuno in my favourite pose (which took an eternity to find online; the standard poses seem far less dynamic to me). I remember, years ago, tracing this exact picture back in Grade 7. It would be neat to find that old drawing and compare it to what I have now. I had a rough time with this because I switched reference images halfway through, since I found a clearer image. Though the proportions aren't exact, the front talon looks kinda foreshortened, which I'll gladly take.

Espeon I'm less happy with, as again a relatively simple image has let me down. I couldn't draw its back for the life of me (you can see the many erasure marks). Oh well. The overall pose, to me at least, resembles a cat, especially when you factor in the eyes. Most people assume the whole Eevee group to be canines, but I'm not so sure, at least with Espy.

Someday I should draw my original six team, all in battle poses. I'll save that for later, though.

So, I'd wager those few days off last week really helped. I drew more pictures, and with much better quality, that I did through most of the summer. Actually, I may have put in more time in these seven days than the whole summer. That tells you something ... well, mostly that I had time off from work, but I choose to spend that time drawing as opposed to, say, sleeping, or watching TV.

I almost certainly won't be able to keep this pace up [editor's note: I didn't], but I will try. Onwards and upwards.