Day 24

I'll keep it short and sweet today. If you've been keeping up with things you'll know that this week I pretty much just have time to do daily studies before I have to move on to other things.

The key difference today is that I took a break from studying hands and did some gesture and figure drawing.

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One minor breakthrough I did feel I had during this session was I finally felt like I was starting to see the gesture. I realized that what I had been thinking was the flow of the gesture (and I was successfully drawing) was in fact still very much a product of the contours. I was still too focused on the specific lines of the figure and it wasn't allowing me to really see the gesture. But at some point, maybe a little before the mid point, I started to see the broader gesture and focus on that.

Though I still struggled with my usual hangups like proportions, once I made that realization and started to apply it I felt like my gestures came together much much better. The last four (the bottom row) in particular I felt really turned out nicely, and that was primarily because I was able to focus on the gesture first, before adding in the more specific contours of the figure.

Hooray for learning!

More to come.

Day 25

The main bulk of my hand study is drawing to a close. Maybe another week left, maybe be less. At that time I will spend a little time looking at other resources for drawing hands before moving on to a couple of extended studies both from life and reference. Finally, I hope to galvanize my new found knowledge by attempting to break it down and share it in what will be my first tutorial video... a daunting prospect, but nothing ventured nothing gained (to be as cliche as possible)

Today, once I completed the section of the video I was on, I decided to do something a little different. Rather than drawing (usually) one hand in as much detail as I could manage with the time I had, I would draw as many hands from reference as I could with that same time.

It was a good experience and one I think I'll do for a while longer. Or maybe I'll alternate between the two for a while. Obviously there are some issues with some of them and they lack a great deal of confidence but, as I have often said, that's the point of practicing.

Still feels like I'm getting some proportional issues. They tend to be either too long or too short. Hmm, gonna have to work on that.

So that's day 25. More to come.

Day 26

This was one of the hardest days yet, if not the hardest (though that may quickly be overshadowed by tomorrow). The combination of a bad back and an oncoming cold made it really difficult to sit there and do even the minimum drawing. But I'm trying to change my mental attitude toward it and work to become someone who draws every day. Not for anyone else, but in my own perception. As a part of who I am. I am someone who draws every day. So I drew.

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The left one is Zombie Sketch by Patrick Reilly. Which has a great dynamism and energy to it that I love. The second is one I've done before, Golden Prayer, by Georgi Gerogiev. The last time I did this one I was focused on the face and, as far as I recall, barely touched the hands. They were quite challenging to pull of as they are deceptively simple. But the complexity of even those simple interlocking forms took some doing to get right.

So that's it for day 26. I'll be back tomorrow one way or the other, I won't let this cold stop me! More to come.

Day 27

Still pretty sick. Just trying to make sure that I'm doing some work and maintain the habit. Bleh.

Decided to start off with a few very quick nose studies. This was an attempt to fix some anatomy issues on my paintings.

A brief experiemnt with changing out the background. Pleased with the fact that it seems to read pretty well without any linework present. Some potential here, but just an experiment.

Working to fix some of the anatomy around the nose and the far eye. Realized that the problem wasn't the nose itself but the way it connected to the face. Still some work to do on this.

Yep, that was day 27. Back to being sick now. More to come.

Day 28

This was such a short day that I'm not even going to bother uploading an actual image. I just did about 20 minutes worth of painting on the character portraits I've been working on and called it. This is the problem with being sick, or really allowing anything to disrupt and established routine. I had every intention of getting back to do at least a little more work today, but because the underlying structure of the day that I'm used to wasn't there it just never happened.

And I'm still sick. I plan to at least try to impose some structure on my day today, even if that structure is just marking time between rests. There has got to be a way to maintain structure even in times like this. It's just such a challenge.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

More to come.

Day 29

Still sick, but I think things are starting to improve. Though it was difficult today I managed to do my normal minimum of of studies, though I didn't accomplish much beyond that.

It's getting there. I feel like I'm starting to draw hands with a great deal more confidence than I had previously. Still a ways to go, but I feel like I'm seeing some improvements.

Did a few difficult hand gestures today with one or two of them taking a good deal of time to get feeling even a little right. Then there's that one just to the lower right of the claw hand, which feels like the index finger is too short because I didn't use enough contrast when delineating the tip. And the less said about that bottom one, the better. Lots of room for improvement there .

So that's day 29 all wrapped up. Starting to feel better and hoping that will continue each day so I can get back to doing more than just the minimum each day.

More to come.

Day 30

Woohoo! I can't believe it's been 30 days already and still going strong. The only significant setback so far is this damn cold that doesn't seem to want to go away completely. As I sit hear and type this I worry that it may be coming back. Particularly frustrating since I thought it was going away. Grr.

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If I'm wrong and you know the real artist, please tell me. I couldn't find the actual image anywhere specifically connected to any artist, but after some searching I managed to track down this individual who's name is at least connected to this piece and has a similar style with other similar images. Still, I could have missed something. Please let me know.

It gave me a great deal of trouble, unexpectedly. The left-most hand (her right) I made way to big to start with and had to back things off significantly. In the end I may have backed it off too much and made it too small. Nevertheless, I'm feeling pretty good about the hand gesture itself.

The study on the right is "Gonna Cut Ya" or "Another Sword Wielding Gentleman in a Bad Mood" by André Brown Mealha. Going far more stylized with this one with far simpler hands. For the most part I feel like it succeeded, though that left-most hand (his right) is far too tilted. It doesn't feel like he's actually gripping anything to me. I'll need to watch out for that in the future.

So that about wraps up day 30, now if I can muster the energy it's time for my weekly gesture and figure drawing!

More to come.

Day 31

Today is gesture and figure study day! I nice change of pace mid-week. This time I decided to use a different resource for at least part of it. Croquis Cafe is a great YouTube channel that puts of life-drawing model videos once a week. They've got quite a large collection and it's a great resource if you don't have actual life drawing classes in your area. Though I did end up switching back to Line of Action for the last one. This was simply because I could set it up for a longer study.

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So that's day 31. I think I may finally be over my cold now (fingers crossed) so hopefully I'll be able to start carving out more time each day for drawing.

More to come.

Day 32

Genuinely feeling better but still have very little extra time unfortunately. At the moment my extra time is being taken by putting together a demo level for the indie game. A slow but fun process.

Sitting here and thinking about it I have to acknowledge that there's at least a part of me that is grateful that I'm so busy because it's easy busy. Coming up with things to draw is hard and it always takes a lot of effort to get a project moving forward. Once I'm in, I'm in and I have no problems. But getting started requires real effort that is sometimes so hard to make.

This is why I have often been caught in the trap of just doing studies. Studies are easy. What you have to do is already laid out in front of you.

This means I need to make time soon to get back to doing some original work. The longer I let "I'm busy" remain an excuse the harder it will be to take that step.

So today was hand studies day. I've finally managed to finish the hands portion of that DVD. When I get back to this next week I plan to look into a few other sources and do a brief study there before moving on. Should be fun, and I already feel like I've learned a lot.

Of course, sometimes you just have one of those days where things just don't seem to go right. When I got to my own studies from reference this morning I struggled so much. The first one (upper left of the lower three) eh, okay. A struggle, and not really successful, but I kind of got there in the end. Originally I had drawing the fingers at too much of a slant when coming from the palm. But I think what's really screwing it up here is the thumb which is stil just wrong, despite my best efforts.

The second hand (upper right of the lower three) came out much better though there are still some issues. Mostly I think with the placement of the fingers as they attach to the palm.

The final hand just failed. I don't really know what happened. Looking at it now I can see that the proportions are a mess, It's too long, it doesn't have the depth it needs to accommodate the fingers being bunched into a fist, and I think the whole thing is just skewed. I added a little frowny face to reflect how I felt even at the time.

We live and learn.

More to come.

Day 33

Ooof, this seems to be my week to just fall short. I mean, I guess it hasn't been that bad but it feels like virtually every day I've said something along the lines of "I really struggled with this one." And today is no exception.

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All in all it was probably a good struggle and I think I can say that I came out of it feeling like I learned something, but I also kind of came out of it feeling like I've got so far to go it's not even funny.

The second one was a bit easier on me. Nice stylized character design from "Jellybots" by Nicholas Kole.

All in all I'm quite pleased with this one. Getting the large shapes down was easy enough and it really gave me time to focus on the shapes themselves. That is, the shapes that make up the form.

This is probably my biggest lesson going on right now. How important it is to have good shape, not just the larger shapes that make up the silhouette or composition, but the shapes that describe the form as well. I think this is why so many of my old paintings were such a struggle for me. I was so focused on blending and creating smooth transitions between values that I was ignoring the shapes that described the form.

Hopefully that's a lesson I'll take to heart fairly quickly.

More to come.

Day 34

Day 34 has come and gone and for the most part I'm happy with what I've accomplished today. Though there has been so much going on lately and I've been pushing myself so hard that I fear I'm on the cusp of burnout. I need to work to avoid that as much as possible while still finding the time to draw everyday. Not really sure how I'm going to manage that. But I'll find a way.

Today I spent an hour or so and "finished" this character portrait. I say finished in that I mean I don't intend to work on it anymore. There's still a lot that could be done to it. I'm almost tempted to spend a little more time on it just to fix that ear alone. But no. I think I've learned everything from this painting that I needed to learn for now and, given that it was only supposed to be a quick experiment in the first place, I don't see a whole lot of point in continuing. Better to take what I've learned and move on to something new.

For my part I've taken two major lessons from this.

1: Value and texture is more important that color. Get those laid in as early as possible as accurately as possible and gradually turn up the saturation as you go.

2: Good shape is super important. Not just the big shapes, the silhouette and contours, but the graphical shapes that make up the form. The big value shapes. They should be purposeful in their design, as purposeful as the image as a whole. Even without things like details and "blending" good shape will read clearly and be good in its own right.

Valuable lessons I feel.

So that's all from day 34. More to come.