Dec. 21, 2013 - Vilppu Chapter 4, Mental Blocks, and Progress

Finally finished up Vilppu chapter 4

I finally finished up Chapter 4 Box and Sphere forms.  Much like the box forms, I had a lot of trouble really grasping the box forms for some reason.  These only emphasizes one of my weaker points when it comes to forms, and drawing in general.  I need to set time aside to really understand boxes and with only one more week of holiday hustle I'll have more time to work on my weak spots.

Few random sketches

 The first sketch on the left I wasn't very proud of.  It has that feel to it of my older stuff so I just didn't bother finishing it.  The other two I did nontimed figure studies.  I was supposed to do more but I just kind of stopped at 2.  I wanted to draw my characters.


And my characters.
 I remembered what I had said in my last blog about not feeling worthy to draw my own characters.  So I wanted to combat that.

I took a deep breath and gave it my all.  I did these without using any reference.  I wanted to see how much I could draw from my mind solely on memory alone.  They all did require a bit of work before i got them to where i was really happy with them.  I had to cut and move a bit here and there.  But in the end too my surprise, they all turned out rather good!  I was able to pinpoint the trouble areas and touch them up to look just that much better.  I'm beginning to believe that there is much more to the mental games of art than I had ever previously thought.  There is an entire unseen area of mental blocks that need to be torn down before real progress can be made.  It seems the more I become aware of these mental blocks the more I'm able to take the necessary steps to combat those. 

One of those images I felt was good enough to finish.  So Holiday Nona was born!

I dressed nona into some festive clothes.  I tried leaving her colors orange but it seemed to clash with the whole holiday theme a bit so I changed her colors to match her clothes.  with zero reference on this image, I might have to say that this is probably my favorite image to date.  While it isn't perfect, it is really a "sum" of my work and effort put into one image.  and I'm pleased with that.

Dec. 20, 2013 - Sketches

Dec. 19, 2013 - Sketches, Rosalina, and The perfect Image Complex

Sketches

Had a lot on my mind during these sketches.  General busyness of the holidays.  oawowoaowaoaowowa  Even still, some turned out pretty good.  Another day another sketch!

And Rosalina!

Rosalina was recently announced for smash bros so i thought i'd do a thing with her.  So here she is throwing a Luma!  Looking back at this i'm seeing more mistakes pop up than I did when creating it.  Even still, I really enjoyed creating this one.  I tried playing around with lighting a liiiiittle bit.  the end result is not bad, but I could definitely ramp it up next time.  I learned a bit while doing this one.  In the end, I'm glad I did it.


Ya know, I was thinking a lot about the need to complete the "perfect image"  Something that I've given the name "Perfect Image Complex."  It's when you complete a drawing/painting/animation/video then feel the fear not being able to live up to that creation the next time you do something.  Like you've set the bar to a new level and it's impossible to live up to that.  I noticed that a lot.  In particular when I was growing up.  Why is that?  I recently saw a video of an artist guy talking about the importance of mileage when it comes to art.  Putting out as much art as you can not only for you to learn from, but to just get the experience you need in order to do things correctly. 

Before I started really trying to improve my art I would have these moments where I would draw or do something amazing!  Seemingly by accident.  And now that I've put hours into studying and trying to learn the internal workings of a piece of art, I'm convinced it WAS just that, an accident.  I didn't really know what I was doing or where i was going with the piece, I just kinda winged the whole thing and if something turned out good then it was good.  Now, however, things seem to be a bit different.  I can SEE why something works or doesn't.  Or, I am learning to see why things work, i should say.  And it feels like an entirely different ball game.  When something ends up looking right, i now know why it looks right.  Because I've put in the extra time/mileage to learn the subject matter.  While my gestures, forms, etc etc need a lot of work, I can say that my understanding of proportions have really excelled.  This is no doubt because of the constant studying I do.  Interesting thing to note about those, proportions weren't even the thing I was trying to learn.  I just kind of learned it while studying the other forms and such.  I'm not claiming to be perfect at anything, but this just shows just how important it is to really keep an open mind when doing any study.  You just might accidentally learn something new.

The end goal, is to become familiar enough with what you are drawing/creating so that there are no longer those "little accident" levels of success, but rather, well thought out and planned levels of success.  It's a slow process.  Slow process indeed.  But it's a thing im doing.  Gonna conclude this blog with a thing I recently heard somebody say.  I don't remember where or who I heard it from, but it really made me think.  It went something like this. 

"People and objects will come and go in your life, but your art is there till the end."  And that's completely true.  If it's gonna be with me till the end, I might as well nurture it, feed it, and make it more amazing.

Dec. 18, 2013 - FMA Maes-Hughes & Not good enough for my own characters.

One more of these!
Maes Hughes, one of my favorite characters in the series.

 Again, like last time, I winged the pose to see what I could come up with.  I don't really have a lot to say about it (and it's really late XD) But I like how it turned out.

 Aaaaand here's the sketch of it.

On the side, I've been rethinking the story and Lore behind my two robot characters Nona and Dogster.  So I figured I'd give them a doodle.

I have no idea why Nona was so large in this one, I think i had the zoom set wrong or something.  Anyway, not my best by any means, but it is what it is.  And that's all part of this blog, the good, bad, and ugly... I need to remind myself that sometimes.  Remind myself that this blog isn't for all the perfect pictures, but for just freakin everything.  Drawing these did get me remembering...  Didn't I say I wanted to draw my own characters more often?  I completely forgot about that haha.  It's an interesting thing when it comes to my own characters, I don't know if anybody else feels that way when they haven't drawn in a while.  I don't like to see them drawn "not good"  Like i'm not good enough to draw my own characters.  It's an interesting feeling, and i've noticed it just about every time I tried to draw them over the course of my return to art. I guess I just never really gave it a good thought and just left it as it was.  That is silly.  That is a silly way of thinking.  There's no reason i should not feel good enough to draw things I made. Perhaps that's the reason why when I draw my OCs they generally turn out worse than other things I draw.  It's kind of like that whole "fear of success" thing I talked about in another blog..  I'm limiting myself because I don't think Im good enough.  The whole psychological thing.  The next time I draw them, which is soon, I should consciously make an effort to combat these silly thoughts.

Anyway, that's it for now.
More training!

Dec. 17, 2013 - Fullmetal Alchemist Edward and Kimblee

Took a side step from the traditional studies to do something a little more complete.  Gestures and forms and values are all very important aspects of art, but so to is line art and coloring, which I know very little about either of those haha.  I needed something to color and I just recently finished watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, so I figured why not start there?  So here's Ed!

I only used character reference for this one, I wanted to see how I could do on pose and proportion.  I like how it turned out, I do think the proportions are a bit off for the character, and the head might be a bit small, but overall not too bad.  I don't draw without reference very often, but it is a thing I need to learn.  A very interesting thing about reference that I heard from an art podcast a while back is that the more you use it, the less you need it.  It's like saving the images and concepts into your memory.  Recalling them, however seems to be another challenge on it's own.  It seems to be a delicate balance of studying from reference and putting  to use what you've learned and remember.  I can't say exactly how long this took, but I will be doing more colored work in the future, hopefully crammed along side my figure studies.

Next up is Kimblee!

Requested by my good friend shaunzy.  I wanted to push this pose a bit.  I didn't feel the first pose (the first image) really pushed anything and just played it a bit safe.  I tried a bit of twisting and such.  I dont know how well it payed off, but I really like the end result.  Again, I tried not to use reference on this one for the pose or figure.  I thiiiink i did a pretty good job on this one.  I did however really mess up the line work on this.  I wasnt sure exactly sure how to tackle this one and ended up using the line art as more of a sketch thing towards the end.  I also think the coloring job on this one (and perhaps as well as the first one) are flatter than a pancake.  Moreso on this one than the first because of his almost entirely white color scheme.


And because I like this kind of stuff, here are the original sketches.

I have no idea why kimblee was so much smaller in this, perhaps my zoom was off or something.

Line/ink layer.

 and because this made me laugh, here's the ink layer without the line.  Look at eds face.

Dec. 16, 2013 - Gestures

More Gestures

Interesting.  I was able to slip into that mindset a bit easier this time around.  I dont know exactly what it was that set this time apart from other times.  Interesting interesting interesting.  Not only that, but I was able to finish all of these before the 2 min were up all while not feeling too rushed.  which is a bit surprising considering these actually look like i know what I'm doing.  Small steps small steps small steps.  These were more 2 min sketches from http://www.quickposes.com/


More training.

Dec. 15, 2013 - Holiday Rush Continues, Gestures

The holiday busy rush continues.  Here's hoping this is the final week.

Had a busy day, but I did manage to sit down to do a few of these.  As much as I'd like to continue drawing, and man do I, I need to be up earlier than normal this whole week.  Regardless here's the gestures!

These were all 2 min gestures.  I wasn't expecting these results at all.  During these I noticed that I was able to pick out the shapes of the body parts a little better than normal.  The concept of form seemed to be a little bit more in my grasp than usual.  It feels like I was able to capture some of the bending and twisting action Vilppu talks about in his lectures on a few of these.  This excites me.  Ending this blog on a high note feels nice.  I like that.

MORE TRAINING!

Dec. 8 and 9, 2013 - Holiday is Not Over, Pokemon, Dullahan, and Schedule

Silly me, I forgot December had a Holiday.  Busyness has extended another month.
Christmas, Christmas holiday.  owaowaoawowoaowaoawowowao

BUNEARY!  I asked a few friends what to draw and Buneary.

Never drawn Buneary before.  I can say it turned out pretty decent.

Mawile was another pokemon.

Never drew this one either.  I really like how it turned out.  I don't really like how the pose turned out, but overall i think it's nice.

Charmander!

A friend of mine recently had a birthday and I wanted to draw him charmander.  As many times as i've drawn charmander I can never seem to get him right!  I don't know why that is.  I decided to throw out all my reference and freedraw him.  His feet turned out a bit big, but this is much better than the other attempts.  Regardless, I know your probably reading this post, so Happy Birthday again Raz :D!  And as a holiday gift to all of the viewers of this blog, I'll try to keep on top of updates a big more.  More on that after the art though.

Next up, Monster Girl Dullahan

Dullahan?  Their heads come off right?  I'm not too sure, so i drew her sitting on her head.  I actually didn't use any reference for this one.  I wanted to see how It would turn out.  And i'd say not too shabby.  I am really pleased with the proportions.

Lastly, I finally sat down and wrote myself a serious schedule.  I have the absolute worst A.D.H.D. (the one where the mind constantly wanders.  I can sit down for long periods of time, but my brain certainly can't) I very often find myself day dreaming or wondering away from things that i should be doing.  I have learned that the best way for me to combat this is through setting a schedule of some sort for myself.  At the moment it's a pretty basic schedule that consists of times to serious study, work on gestures, free sketching, recording, editing, etc. End goal is to keep me on track with art studies and other various things and to combat the terrible daydreamer mind of mine.  However, with the coming holiday hublub, things will be more complicated these coming weeks.  First and foremost though, i do need to fix this sleep schedule.  Staying up this late cant be a good thing haha.  anyway, MORE TRAINING!