Woohooo! I'm on a roll:)

Ok, I gotta say, I am very much enjoying my time now. Not sure what happened, but it looks like I broke a new plateau when it comes to drawing. I know, I know, still a ton to learn, will always be, but hey, this is pretty damn cool! For the first time, in my life - no less, I can really see my own progress!

So, cutting to the chase. Last night I decided that I need to do a facial study, to try and solidify my understanding of the face. I picked a random face and started working. My goal was to work from the inside out, meaning I was looking for skeleton landmarks that would create a solid proportion and structure, general head shape, then slowly but surely progressing into seeing how different facial muscles formed the face and caused certain forms of the face. Then I tried to get all those forms to work correctly.

I cannot describe just HOW MUCH I learned. This is absolutely amazing! I really understood how much all of that anatomical structure can assist you while working, and how much is in fact going on. No kidding, I was shaking while doing this, cause I was so nervous to put too much pressure on the pencil. Which, btw, finally forced me to start light, and progress from larger to smaller. Basically, I am finally doing things as they have always been told to me to do:)

Ok, I hope I didn't overhype this, as it isn't anything out of the ordinary, but hell, it deffinately is a landmark to how far I went so far. Time to complete - ~2.5 hrs.

Enjoy!

If you want to see a larger version, go HERE.


Till next time!

DK

Long nights, but loving every bit of it!

Been staying up quite a bit lately... Surprising part for myself is that the reason for it is me drawing! I feel exhilarated nearly every time I touch a pencil now (Should I be concerned?...)

Anyway, so I've been going back to learning a bit more anatomy as well these days, going through Glen Vilppu's head anatomy videos. I know that I am still really confused with the cheek area and the depressors of the lips area. It is really useful, and if you don't know it, better get them ASAP. Some of the best anatomy instruction videos that exist.

I didn't go all that nuts with drawing many heads (I will soon, however), but I did try my best at learning what Vilppu was explaining, and at the end of it all I did a head drawing from imagination, trying to remember all that I just learned. Can't say I feel succesful, but I do believe I learned something along the way...

And here is another little brain fart:

I have also not posted my lifedrawing from last week, i believe. As I had a session today as well, here is what I ended up outputting. Sometimes I hope the Pencil Gods will forgive my infinite sins... Because honestly, I fear that these sketches must be pissing the off a whole lot!

Halloween Card WIP

Pen sketch:

 

Tiny midnight sketches

Sat last night, and being inspired by Aidan's work I decided to do a tiny lil test with watercolors. It sucks, very much, but hey, it is better then nothing! Now to get more confidence... Ah, and after seeing all the weird stuff he has on his blog, I sketched a lil creature which I might take further in PS or maybe also in WaterColors.

Attempts at pinups and a large sketch dump

Like I promised the last time, I have gotten a bunch of sketches from some life-drawing sessions. As well, I have gotten into my head to do a sort of "Pin up" girl drawing. And I ended up with a drawing which I actually made entirely out of my head referencing only the anatomy to more or less correctly know where to place the masses. Here is the drawing:

I have done it in a blue Caran d' Ache pencil, which, tbh, is turning out to be one of my favourite weapons of choice! I really like how I can be quite soft with it, and whenever I do the lines, I end up making quite cool flowing results which I enjoy so much. This whole thing took me about 2-3 hours, which is quite a bit. Here is a sketch that started the idea:

This was just a quick pen doodle I did trying to figure out what the pose should be. I redrew the final from scratch, following the way Clair Wendling mentioned that she draws, allowing me for more practice. I also did another attempt before that, but I ended up partially referencing the pose from a model picture, which I cannot say was what I wanted. Here it is:

I tried to play around with proportions, but I gotta be honest, I am not a fan of how it turned out. She got a bit too curvy for the way I pictured it, and I feel I didn't capture what I wanted to get out of the pose. I might come back to it, but I will need to think of some more additions to the design. I really like the old-school pinup drawings, such as those done by Gil Elvgren:

I like the fun in these drawings. I always wanted to do 1 or 2 of such pinups, but maybe with my own twist. 

What makes these interesting to me (beside being a guy, i guess:) is that unlike so many other drawings that are done now days, these aren't of women with some unbelievable proportions (think J Scott Campbell girls, which, in my opinion, tend to get really annoying now days), but rather of natural looking women, someone real, alive. The Marvel style stuff, however "cool" it might be in the nerdy/guy sense of thinking, feels like plastic dolls and to me, and borders on the feeling of cartoon porn rather then interesting and tasteful art. And these old-school pinups are a lot more intricate in the way they display the idea. But I guess that is just what was found interesting back then, the "Marvel" girls of those times... But hey, at least they do not make women look like they should stuff themselves with silicone and stop eating to look beautiful!

In any case, the best part is that while doing that drawing I really came to learn a ton about anatomy. And boy did I ever had fun drawing! This is probably one of the more finished works I have done so far, albeit without a background, but that will at some point change. I am also thinking of trying my hand with some watercolors next time. I will try a couple of drawings straight on the watercolor paper, and see what I can come up with. Probably will be a disaster, but her, what the heck!

Aaaaaaaaanyway, here is the rest of the stuff I sketched from the last month or so that I missed putting up here:

Till next time!!!

-DK

A couple of updates

Had a decent night drawing my girls at home:)

I have also started on the journey of trying to conquer the drawing of hands... It is a damn difficult journey, but I will get there! Some day.... Here is one sheet that I feel like I can actually show, which is terrible anyway, but much better then the rest of the crap I ended up with... Yey for more anatomy studying!

And a little head I did from imagination:

I have more doodles that I often do during lunch-time, as well as I have a few more drawings that never made it here since quite a while which I did during life drawing. I'll post them once I get around to scanning them...

Some sketches

Been a while since the last post. I am still kicking, although not as rapidly as I wish I could. Many things to do, much to get done. I do however still doodle. Here are a couple of recent ones. I will get a few more later as well, along with some copies from Preston Blair's book.
The punk head I did here was entirely out of imagination, so please forgive the crappy anatomy. This is what happens when you are waiting for batch exporting of animations...

Ben!

Was sitting at lunch, and wanted to draw some cartoon after reading some stuff from the Famous Artists Cartoon Course, and one of my fellow workers was programming for his piece of bread on my left, so I had nothing better to do then to draw him. Came out funky, kinda like it, but I will see if I can maybe improve it a little. Enjoy!

The weekend of drawing trees

So this weekend wasn't rich in my drawing practices, but I did get an awesome 3 hour session of drawing things outside, specifically tree. I need thousands more hours to start getting them anywhere close to acceptable, but it was quite a breakthrough for me already, considering I coul dhardly draw them at all before. Was really fun! But I will post only two which I think are worth displaying:)