April hasn't been my month haha. So, I had to take a break to deal with some personal things and moving forward, I will probably be implementing a rest day or two in every week of studies. If I can do 7 days a week, then I will but it has been hard to juggle all of my responsibilities and obligations.
I also took more time than I wanted too on a few of the lineart studies. They were really fun, but got caught up in the weeds in a few of them and with only limited time per day, that ate up some of my time as well.
On the brightside, I got all of my lineart studies completed and did an extra one just because it was fun to do them. My new computer is finally up and running, I just now got my Huion all set up to work alongside of it so really looking forward to doing some work on the new rig. I finished building it about two days ago, and that was a bit of an ordeal due to my novice nature haha. But those major roadblocks are behind me now so hoping for smooth sailing in the future.
Anyways, heres the work from when I left off and including the lineart studies
April 22nd - 23rd
Samus was pretty rough. I wanted to try to do something more detailed and ended up biting off far more than I could chew. In the middle of this one, my old computer decided to uninstall Photoshop and then forget I had a graphics card again. It was really challenging, it's not great at all but I'm proud that I finished it. There were a few times that I thought of just scrapping it, but I made myself push through and try to make the best of it.
A lot of errors for sure (Especially the hand), but will revisit at a later date. Think her design is a good one to challenge myself with.
This one, I started to kind of panic, because I tackled it right after Samus. I thought I wasted too much time with that one so I decided I would just to a trace over of the character to study how they approach the linework and to se how they construct forms. After I finished that, I just felt like it was a cop-out, so I chose to do a stylized version of her with a more general style just to see if I could do it.
I don't think it turned out too bad. As with all of them, a lot of errors to work out but think overall it's an alright sketch. Had a lot of fun with this one. It was a change of pace and I felt better after doing an actual drawing rather than just tracing over it for a study.
I did this one almost exclusively because the reference that I used for Cordellia had her included on it and wanted to do a proper study of this style. She also had more anatomy elements which I thought would be a good challenge for me, drawing bare skin rather than covering it with clothing.
This one was a challenge. I really struggled with the female form. It was good practice though and I think it turned out pretty good.
Finally, I did Death. I really like Darksider's art style. Joe Mad's work is awesome so I wanted to do a study of it. This one I put a time limit of an hour and a half on. It was fun, I worked a lot looser on this one. I did get carried away with some of the crosshatching, but oh well.
It's not great, but it was good to prove to myself that we can get something down like that on a time limit and have it look at least passable.
Overall, although I need a lot of improvement, I can tell I am improving. Each time I approached one of these my basic skeletons were constructed way faster each time and with ease. Even getting a basic human form down improved a lot each time. The ribbon studies came in handy and I started implementing that on the hair of some of the studies, which made it look more natural and added some energy to them.
I don't know. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel like I am truly progressing. The end results may not reflect it as well, but my processes are improving, becoming more efficient, and making more sense to me.
When I did the lineart studies for the year long drawing challenge prior to this (before I restarted with the weekly schedules), each one took at least 3 hours and I achieved far less in each one. They weren't detailed, the line work wasn't confident, my forms were much worse, and I spent far more time just trying to get a basic human figure together than what was required for these ones. It's a small victory, but it feels good. Still a long ways to go.
Anyways, plan is to get back on track with week 4 starting tomorrow. Going to watch through the perspective lecture tonight and take my notes then it's onto week 4 officially. Thank you all for looking and I appreciate any feedback you have for me.
