Brain Freeze

Yes, bad quality this time around.  I did not use my scanner like I usually do.


It was a pretty bad month in dealing with art.  I don't know what happened, but I just couldn't draw too much.  I would get out the sketchbook and pencil, then nothing would happen.  What little I did muster was not much.  I've been playing around with the whole comic thing, and now I'm starting to write the story for one in what little free time I have.  I hope I can get some ideas flowing in the next month.

A Short Break

I had just shy of a week off last week, and I spent that entire time sketching.  It wasn't a lot, but I did learn some new things.  I'm still working on full body sketches, and trying to get some dynamic poses in.  I've been working on cleaning up lines and making them more interesting by adding weight to lines in some places, and keeping them thin in others. 

 

I've also been looking at comic art again.  I always seem to go to that, for some reason.  I'd like to work on shading my sketches in pencil so that I can do a better job during the inking stage.  

Usually, I fill up my requested day off with a shift at work just so that I can get some extra money, but I think that for a while I will just leave it empty so that I can have more time to get my art in order.  Just until the holidays come up.

Let Me Show You Something!

Here is something that I haven't shared yet with anyone.  I'm going to reveal the steps involved in my digital paintings.  I had a speed painting session a while ago, and I recorded my progress along the way.  Here it is:

 5 minutes

 10 minutes

 20 minutes

 30 minutes

 45 minutes

 55 minutes

1 hour

That's the best speed painting session I've had so far.  I've managed to get all the main details in  this thing in an hour.  I did another 1-hour session a few months ago, but I don't like it as much.

Happy August?

It's been a while.  I skipped July.  Oh well.  It hadn't been a very good month. I've been sketching on and off, trying to get back into the habit of doing at least one drawing each day.  I want to get better with drawing bodies in more dynamic poses.  It's a bit difficult.  I've been looking at references and getting the basic shapes, then building around those.

 I looked at photos and drawings, and traced the shapes over them to get these pose wires.  It helps me get a better understanding of how the body should look during certain poses and actions.

 These three are part of a huge project that I started a couple months ago.  So far these are what I've been most satisfied with, and I hope to finalize them soon.  I'm still redrawing the other parts.  I don't want to say what they are yet.

June Went By

Yes, I am late again.  I've been working 6 unpredictable days each week, and I am very tired.  I'm still trying to sketch in my spare time, but there hasn't been a lot of sketches that I liked.  I guess I'm just discouraged about how things are going in my life.  I do need a change, but don't quite know how to make the changes. 

But no one wants to hear about that, on to the sketches!  Sorry about there not being much for the month, I hope to get into the mood to sketch a lot again, and turn some of the sketches into final pieces.

Oh! I've gotten into inking, and I've started using my pen and nibs with the jar of ink instead of the liners that I usually use.  It's a good change.  I'd gotten into it a couple years ago, but I couldn't get it right.  It turns out I was using crappy ink that was too thick, so it wasn't running down the nib properly.  Well, I got new ink, and now inking is pretty fun.  So far I've been fooling around with short comics, so I might upload those soon.

Late!

Yes, I haven't uploaded anything in over a month.  It's been pretty crazy.  Most days I would just come home from work and go right to bed, since my schedule is all over the place and my amount of sleep has been suffering.  I have been trying to fit in some time to draw, but now I think I need to figure out an entirely new schedule.

 

I may need to start drinking highly caffeinated sodas again.

Practice Makes...

Working a bit more with the watercolor techniques, and I guess it's getting a bit better.  Just a little bit, though.

Weird Faces

Several speed painting sessions.  That would explain why all these sketches look so scary.  I'm trying not to get rusty, while at the same time getting new ideas.  I was trying to pick up some digital watercoloring techniques, but as you can see, I need a lot more practice.

For the People 2

I've been very busy.  Still working on requests...finished one earlier this week, and still have one left to go.  I was going to work on some stuff today, but I'm so tired that I just couldn't bring myself to get to it.  I hate that feeling.  Not only that, but I'm kind of having an art block at the moment.  I haven't been able to sketch a whole lot in my own time, because I can't really think of anything at the moment.

Sick

It's not fun being sick, especially since it's my weekend off.  There's no tea or chicken soup here, and I don't have the energy to get any.  I guess I'll just continue being miserable for a while longer.  My nose is sore, and my face feels like it's being squished together.  Bleeegghh.
I was going to upload more sketches, but I cannot seem to find the rest of them.  Maybe I should just go back to bed.  No, I can't, there's too much work that needs to be done.

Plans

I'm late, but I'm back.
What have I been working on?  Making a portfolio.  I'm making all new illustrations for this thing, and I've used my first day off in the second week to make a list of what to do and make the sketches.  I think I finished all the sketches, and I have the portfolio case picked out.  So now I can just get started on finalizing them.  This is going to be a lot of work.  Here are a few sketches for the illustrations that I'm going to do.

It took me forever to get the lion the way I wanted it.  I'm not too good with animals.  I'm getting better at drawing the full body.
Okay, now I have some reqeusts that I need to finish in the meantime.