Day 5: Birds!

17b) Bird 1



A bird! This one drawn without any reference of any kind, just made up out of my own head, without the distraction of any background. Anyone recognice anything it could be? I'm starting to have fun just shading things.

18b) Coffee Guy



Mexican Coffee Guy. Or just some guy - really quick sketch this time, I was out of the house and didn't have very long to get the likeness down.

19b) Bird 2



Bird on a stick. Had fun with the feathers on this one, aroudn the eyes and head - I think this is the first bird I've ever drawn, which is why the body is lumpier than it should be.

20b) Bird 3



Ah, and *here* is where I started to really *get* how to draw birds, today. Even shaded in a sky for this guy here, wings poised to spring into the air.

Day 4 of Four New Pics a Day!

Hmm, a lot of animals recently, isn't there? Much as I enjoy drawing humans, there's more freedom in drawing an animal, in that there's less pressure to make it look 'right', whatever that means in the human context. More room to play with things like foreshortening, strange poses and textures not found with most human forms.

Enjoy!


13b) Flower Circle



Continuing to explore the idea of using a darker background to enhance the lighter shapes and shades. Trying to make this pop off the page a bit, glow - it'll be interesting to see if I can get the same effect with color, rather than graphite.

14b) Another Hand



It's been awhile since I've drawn my left hand, I've forgotten how fun it is - expect to see more of them.

15b) Leaping Deer



IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR YOU WATCH OUT

Heh, this was fun to draw, really exagerating the foreshortening. I thought about blurring/rubbing out the latter 1/3 or 1/4 to give a greater sense of depth and movement, but decided against doing so, for this.

Do you think it worked, or did I just end up drawing a horribly mutilated deer?

16b) Stalking Bear



A bear. Worked on emphasizing his bulk, roundness, strength - still working on getting a handle on non-human anatomy. Frustrating, sometimes, but in strange ways that just make me happily stubborn to do more of them. It really does work to mentally split 4-legged animals into three 'pieces' - hindquarders, middle, and front. Once thoes relationships are laid out accuratly, the details can be put in, following those thirds.

Day 3 (again) of my 4 New Arts a Day

Ahhh, I missed this. Hope you guys missed it too! There's a lot more in store - not only am I getting tons of ideas for stuff, but I'm really gaining confidence in my drawing and painting ability, and that's going to be reflected here more and more in the coming weeks and months.

9b) Dandylions



One of my favorite flowers!

Pen and a bottle of ink, getting used to the needle-point nib, and controlling more complicated forms. I think this is one of the best things I've drawn recently, too bad dandylion season is mostly finished over here.

10b) Toon Skunk



Playing around with cartoony style things. Animal proportions are a bit different from human proportions, which makes things easier and harder in different ways than drawing people. Main reason for doing this was to see if I could, and I really enjoyed the curvy lines this pose allowed me to play with. Much easier than I expected too, I'll probably do more like this - I'm not usually one for cute, and I'm not a fan of the typical "100% human body with animal head and tail" that most anthropomorphic furry art ends up being - but stylized animals are just fun to draw.

11b) Horse Profile



A horse! I have the strange feelings that the legs are too short and skinny, but I'm not sure if that's actually true... It might just be something to do with my posing and very basic shading... definatly have to work on improving my horse-sense.

12) Fishing



Guy in a fishing boat on a lake. Experiment in silhouette, again used the fat permanant marker to lay down the inital sketch... I was going to go back and lay down some better reflections, but I seem to have lost the original paper somewhere.

Day 2 of my Restarted 4 New Arts a Day!

And Day 2! It's good to be back. Much better idea for me to update these in the morning, instead of waiting until evening, even if it does mean getting up an hour earlier. My mind is alive with things I want to paint for you guys! And draw, pen, and illustrate - good thing this is a Sunday, because I'm going to be busy.

Any requests?


5b) Falling Drowning



This is going to be a painting - what's the feeling you get when you look at this? Really look at it - gives me a feeling of vertigo, and I'm the one who drew it. Great exercise for improving your straight-line and square/rectangle drawing. Make sure to plan it out ahead of time though, or you might find yourself falling off the page.

6b)



This was fun. Started when I glanced at a photo I had of myself and whipped a permanant marker across the page - that gave me the hairline and neck, so I just tossed in the ears, nose, eyes, and chin, there I had... well, mostly me. Not quite though, since I just outlined that in about twenty seconds, so I spent a bit of time 'masaging' the rest of it with the pen I had on hand, give it some depth and roundness, shading; in retrospect I should have left off the shoulders and chest, but I think the face turned out well enough for a quick thing for me to post up here.

Definatly going to do more like this, but with more forethought and planning to achieve a more realistic presentation.

7b) Unknown Leaf



Not sure exactly what kind of leaf this is, but I love the depth, shading and tone, roundness I managed to give to it. Started off with calligraphy pen and a bottle of ink, about a 1.2 millimeter nib to get the bones of it, the darks, then a regular HB pencil to seperate the leaf from the whitespace surrounding it, and a heave plack conte crayon for those darks along the edges, and the modelling in the center mass of the leaf.

Anyone recognice the species of plant this leaf comes from?

8b) Unknown Flower



A flower this time, again I'm not certain of the species, though it's vaguely familiar. Nothing too fancy with this, just regular old pencil, though I was surprised how much that rough toned background made the lightness of the flower stand out.

Restart!

...and I'm back.

Thought about continuing the old numbering scheme, which would have meant that what here is '1b' would be '65', but I decided that'd be dishonest. This is all about seeing how many consecutive days I can upload four new art pieces each day; continuing the numbering from my last point of failure would be dishonest.

So! Now that I've gained confidence in pencil and graphite, I've moved over to pen and ink, markers, calligraphy pen and bottle of ink, and it really is a lot of fun. The tactile feedback of a knife-edge calligraphy nib vibrating against the surface of the paper as it bleeds black ink behind its path is something just not found in the smooth silken slide of soft graphite or charcoal.

1b) Crest



Small thing here, getting used to drawing with a calligraphy pen and bottle of ink, along with a few permanant black in markers of various sizes and a regular ball point pen.

2b) Thing in a Box



Thing in a box. Practicing angles, construction, lighting - my angles are off a bit, but I've sinced learned how to correct that, I've got a painting of something like this somewhere around here I'll upload later on, angles corrected.

3b) Mountain Meadow



This was fun, all of this was done with calligraphy pen, various nibs, and a bottle of ink - I smudged it in the bottom right there, the ink isn't as black as I'd like, but it flows well, and it's convenient for on-site sketching like this.

4b) Dead Tree



Big old rotten dead tree. Background was added artificially to give it a sense of scale, if I remember correctly this was in the corner of an old gravel yard. Was fun messing with the angles and perspective here, and I'm glad the flowers worked as well as they did. Drawing with various pens, markers, and ink doesn't exactly leave any room at all for erasing.

Hey Guess What

I'm back!

So much for that old grand plan - every great success needs it's initial failure, and I think that's enough of that for now.

Also I'm pretty sure I'm getting the hang of this art thing now, because dang, I've got some great stuff in store for you guys.

New grand plan (which is the same as the old grand plan, just not broken anymore) begin!

(secret thing) Psst: If you send me an image of your face I might draw it with pen and ink. (end secret thing)