Tools, tools, tools..

Clearly, I need to figure out how to use my tools. Fun enough sketch, but I need to learn how to digitally ink things. More exploration of Painter forthcoming, clearly.

Yes, I have Do As Infinity on my iTunes.. why do you ask?

Distance Traveled: 209.28 / 63360 (0.33%)

My muse only works weekdays..

... damnit.

Nothing says Saturday like drinking alcoholic smoothies in your jammies and toe socks.
Oh, and making baby talk to disgruntled cats.

Clearly, Sunday is for boat studies. Does it help if I say this is research for a potential future project?

Distance traveled: 205.55 / 63360 (0.32%)

Relativity..

You'd never guess this single page took me almost two hours to create. Studies, studies, studies.. I have so much to learn, but at what point does the endless practice become a shield to hide behind?

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaair!

Distance Traveled: 192.22 / 63360 (0.30%)

I will walk 500 miles..

At least, that's what it'll feel like, after an hour sketching people from the Social Documentary group on Flickr. I wonder how much better these would've turned out if I'd had a round or two with the Gesture Drawing tool? Perhaps I need to set the Flickr set to 'fast slideshow' for the first few rounds.

Ragged, rough, rusty... Bah. At least I have a new tool to help me improve.

Distance Traveled: 185.56 / 63360 (0.29%)

Wonder woman...

Yes, I may not be able to throw out sheet upon sheet of scribble, or beat myself against (what appears to be) the impossibility of a fully rendered scene and cook dinner.. but I can do one. I've found an actual purpose for Victoria's Secret catalogues-- near-nude figure drawing! Trying to discern where the planes, solid forms, squishy forms, and designer bathing suits all go..

Gestural in red, underlying generalized forms in blue, squishy bits in green.

Now time to turn my attention to the 'Meat Dumplings a la Tamerlane' from Imperial Mongolian Cooking. Yes, used bookstores are treasure troves of unknown awesomeness just waiting to be discovered.

Distance Traveled: 178.89 / 63360 (0.28%)

Crash and burn...

Despite my best attempts I sometimes do a very poor job in regulating my energy expenditures. Case in point, I burned out on the Tengu failure and spent the last week or so hemorrhaging energy and drive. Apparently three-day weekends have remarkably restorative powers, especially when the first day is spent curled up on the couch with one's husband (who's busy playing ridiculous video games such as DeathSpank, of course), and the second is spent devouring a sizeable portion of James Gurney's Color and Light (and randomly deciding to tape and prime a wall in the house for repainting).

In any case, back to the drawing board. That mile isn't going to walk itself..

30 second gestures

60 second gestures

120 second gestures. When increasing the interval no longer results in better drawings
I know it's time to switch to something else.

.... like a gryphon!

Applying some lessons learned from Mr. Gurney. From top to bottom, left to right:
3/4 lighting, edge lighting, reflected light, frontal, and from below.

I need to work out a sensible division of time and effort. Simultaneously trying to master Flash, Painter, Maya, the principles of color, gestural studies, t-shirt designs and portfolio pieces really just results in a lot of thrashing and flailing and not much progress.

Oh! And to the kind souls who've left comments, and to those who just stop by on their wanderings-- my thanks. :)

Distance Traveled: 172.22 / 63360 (0.27%)

Grr, argh...

What was going to be another night of study turned into purely emotional interpretation of the Aerials, by Chop Suey, Genius playlist my iTunes popped up.

See if you can spot the ones inspired by Tainted Love and Stupify.

Du Hast is too kickass for me to draw to. Crawling in the Dark and Stellar, however...

These are all straight from my head. The female form is so beautiful,
 I'm trying very hard to learn what forms and lines to use to reproduce it..
 well, not accurately but faithfully.

Distance Traveled: 138.89 / 63360 (0.22%)

Sketching through..

Decided it would be more productive to make notes while reading through the Artist's Guide. I cheated a little by mostly skimming tonight-- I'm guessing my progress won't be nearly as forward in future posts.

Sketching to pg 87-- in conjunction with the previous set, anyway.

Ah, but can I apply what I've learned?

Two more days 'till new Derby topic! Also, I recently discovered www.99designs.com, which will certainly act as an excellent prompter even if I don't submit everything. Finding the balance between design and drafting may prove to be difficult.

Distance Traveled: 118.91 / 63360 (0.18%)

If at first you don't succeed..

Been very busy over the last few days. Derby 185 spawned a slew of ideas, and so I spent all day Friday slogging away at my initial design below.

Tertiary tea party, complete with Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and a Thrinaxodon in a teapot.
This may be a design worth revisiting and printing later. 

Lo and behold, as the derby started accepting submissions it was run over with Tyrannosaurs, ceratopsians, and tea-themed entries. Curses! Well, onto another.

My first derby design was very simple and minimalist, and while it garnered a lot of attention, it seems the strong preference for the community is for very detailed designs. So-- I set about experimenting with halftones.

First, an initial sketch done in Painter (which I'm quickly warming up to).

Then, colors roughed out. Since I wanted the tengu to emerge from the shadows
I played around with only pulling out the highlights

Sigh, and then onto halftones and a final design. I'm really not happy with how the design came out, but I've learned a lot-- and you never know what fantastic tips the shirt.woot community might have.

Vote here!

In short, I think next time around I'm going to take a slightly different path. I always get these really grandiose, intricate design ideas that I just don't have the skills to implement. So, next time I'll focus on short, simple cell shaded designs (black outline, shirt color shadow/dark ink shadow, base color). Since voting is per person and not per day there's no incentive to get designs out ASAP-- so Thursday night will be spent churning out thumbnails and color keys for potential designs. It's better to do something simple well than to try something really dynamic and fail miserably. n__n;;

Endless study....

... brings endless discovery!

While cleaning I rediscovered my copy of The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression, by Gary Faigin. What a treasure trove! While Patrick was encouraging me the other day he assured me my drawings had 'the spark'-- that they communicated feeling and emotion, even through the roughest of lines. Not content with that, I'm certainly planning on reading through this book cover to cover-- and tonight's sketches are a few of his comments on facial structure 'rules' that I'm attempting to commit to muscle memory.

Eyes and mouths, muwahahah.

New Derby on Thursday.. here's hoping I stick in the Fog of War with this one!


Distance Traveled: 105.58 / 63,360 (0.16%)