Fiddler

Had a great time at Renaissance Faire yesterday. We saw many wonderful performances, but there was a band called Circa Paleo that really stood out. Their music was of professional quality, and the lead fiddler of the band had an inspiring amount of positive energy. I'll always remember her, who puts full effort into her work and enjoys it whole-heartedly.

 Painted from a photo we took.

Study

cleaned up and blocked in local colors and where the shadows go.

Study

Decided to try to do a study from photo.  Didn't realize how complex this would turn out until I started doing it.  I still have no clue how to deal with structures that do not fit into a 90 degree grid...

ref photo:

http://www.dreamstime.com/rococo-architecture-style-thumb20077340.jpg

Study

Tried to think in terms of watercolor while coloring digitally.  Halfway through the process, I realized that I'm masking in a way similar to how some colorists would mask their comic book work.  I like how this process forces me to simplify stuff, and would love to explore this more.

Mask layer below:

Study

Spent half an hour learning how to use path tools to make my own perspective grid. Short exercise today, gotta run to work!

On the plus side, I found an awesome watercolor artist on Deviant art yesterday.  I'll be doing studies from his paintings this week.

Source:
http://fav.me/d11t9j1

Study

Gino suggested that I could use an actual ruler to draw straight lines on my cintiq.  The simple elegance of this solution blew my mind.

Study

New one.  Reference:


http://fav.me/d4w90yx

Study

Hard to believe this thing took me 3 days (roughly 3-4 hours total) to do.  Maybe doing more = getting faster?  I also really need to make myself a good perspective grid.

Study

slowwww... oh well.

Study

I wanted to switch gears and do some architecture... then I realized how slow I am at doing these.  I started out trying to sketch from memory, but it just didn't work.  I knew too little about principles of architecture to be able to fill in the blanks.  So mid-way through the sketch, I gave up and began drawing directly from the reference.

Reference: http://fav.me/d34d84j

I'd give a lot to be able to draw like this guy :)

Study - review day

I wondered how much I'd retain from the earlier drawings, so I briefly looked at either the original photo or my drawing and attempted to reproduce the pose and anatomy.  In a way I guess it's inaccurate to just call these "memoriziation", because I'm making up a lot of stuff according to where I think they should be.

Complex poses are still very hard :)

Study

Have a lot on my plate today.  It's funny how not having to get to work actually makes me rush my personal study in the morning.  There's something to be said about rigid deadlines.

On the plus side, I'm reasonably happy with the pre-study memorization this time.  I screwed up the arms, but the torso and legs look plausible.  I'm still super iffy with the muscles on the back, though, and the arms... I always have trouble with the facing of that deltoid.

Study

Gotta get to work a tad earlier this morning, so had to rush the blind drawing afterwards.  Funny that in many aspects, my blind drawing before looks better than the after.  I guess it's a good sign? hehe.

Study

It makes so much sense now that I would suck at posing.  I can't remember all of the information that goes into poses by just looking at something.  I'd forget major things like which direction those blades are facing!  And that pelvis & legs.  Do I have trouble posing legs in my head...

I was also really confused by how the guy's shoulder muscle kind of melding into his back muscles.  Didn't make sense of it until I did the photo study.  This is why I need to actually draw, rather than flipping through artbooks and hope to just get better from that.

Study

Same idea with yesterdays, but man did I screw up the first memorization bad :P  I got way too distracted by the dude's arm muscle and didn't even remember his overall pose.  This time I decided to do a blind drawing from memory after doing the photo study.  The red parts are corrections afterwards.

On a side note, I felt slightly creepy because the photo ref model seems so very young.  To the guys who love to draw half-naked little girls: I salute your mental fortitude.

Study

Trying to train my memory.  Wake up, lazy brain!

Reaper Inked

I digitally inked over a pencil drawing of mine.

I may still feel uncomfortable with drawing, but I actually really enjoy using solid black in shadows :)

Richard the Skeleton Paladin

Character sketch for a friend.  Description by her (winged lions, knotworks, gold) and armor/shield design by me.

It takes me a long time to do a drawing, but hopefully it'll get quicker as I become less intimidated.

Edit: One more, for the same friend.  It's kind of ridiculous how much easier it is for me to draw a girl than a guy.

Watercolors

Did a few watercolors with mom when she visited.  It's nice to be able to share this hobby with my mom.

I think working smaller is helping me with watercolor a little.  I still screw up a lot, but at least now I can tell where I screwed up, and can think of ways that may work better next time.

Visual Library?

In real life, I can be a very oblivious person.  My lazy brain enjoys seeing color and light, but does not care much for trying to do complicated tasks such as remembering details or figuring out how machine parts fit together.  I've vaguely guessed that this was going to become a road block for me a couple of years ago, and tried a few times to force myself into drawing stuff I absolutely hate.  At the time, I gave up in frustration because it was so painful for me.

Here I am, attempting to throw myself at the problem again.  Funny thing is, it's actually a lot less painful to do than I remembered.  Maybe the failed previous attempts weren't a total waste after all...

Anyhow, for starters, here's a sketch of a strange machine that came up in my google image search.