Daily Sketch 22: male, 9-10

Original Image. (will be posted as soon as I find it again)

Analysis: I got a new toy...a touch-screen laptop with drawing pen. I decided to try my daily sketch digitally. There is some disconnect between the pen tip and the screen. Also, I either drew too small, or have the image at too low resolution (it was set at 150 dpi). I'm also having issues with the angle of the pen; if it is angled too much, it doesn't register on the screen. I'll need to practice more.

Illustration Friday: instinct

"while the hunter used every instinct to take that mouse, the mouse had his own instinct..."

It's hard to see, because the sketch is so small, but the mouse with the cape is a stuffed mouse, not a real one.

update: I accidentally put colored pencil as the description on Illustration Friday, so I felt obligated to color it.

Daily Sketch 21: Male, 7-8 years

Original Image.

Analysis: I did the sketch today, then I reanalyzed the jaw line, since that's where I'm making the biggest mistakes. I then tweaked the jaw line a bit until I was happier with it. I'm still not pleased with the left eye/side of face and right ear. The eyes are too close, and a bit too big. I'm pleased with the hair and the nose.

I tried a little digital tweak to the eyes, and just a slight shift and slight resize helped a LOT.

Daily Sketch 20: male, 5-6 years

Original Image.
The story behind this photograph is a heart wrenching one.

Analysis: This is the first actually-15-minute sketch I have done in a long time. Also, I really roughed everything in quickly, without much careful measuring. Still, for the unique angle to the face, I feel I did a pretty good job. If anything, I'd work more on the neck/jaw line, since that is the most awkward area. Also, I really liked the shape of the lips and did not do them justice in the time allotted. I was happy that I at least roughed in the shape of the brother.

Daily Sketch 19: male, 3-4 years

Original Image.

Analysis: I succeeded in getting an emotion...I just don't think I drew the correct one. He looks angry rather then unhappy. I'm also not quite sure how to draw the 'laugh lines' that run from the nose to the mouth on children, since strong lines usually denote wrinkles/older age. Need more practice at subtle expression shifts.

Illustration Friday: celebrate

Ok, so technically my illustration friday was done on a saturday. Oh well. I still plan on posting a Saturday daily sketch. It took a while to get the limbs where i wanted them and looking natural. Overall, pretty happy with this sketch.

The story behind this sketch is from our Friday the 13th fun at work. They posted pictures of good luck charms all over the building and at different times they'd email out an image and you had to go find that image to win a prize. I found one of the four-leaf clovers and won a large pink bouncy ball. Silly, but fun. :)

Daily Sketch 18: male, 1-2 years

Original Image.

Analysis: Drawing someone is worse if you know them. Plain and simple. Then it is not about quick sketch or drawing what you see. It becomes more about does it really look like them, or in this case: is the sketch cute enough because the kid sure is. Philip and Jenny, your kid is MUCH cuter. :) It's his lips...extremely cute AND distinctive, but a pain to draw and have look right. Also, I got the angle to the eyes and mouth, but missed it slightly with the nose.


The part of my daily sketch that people normally don't get to see is the drawing overlaying the picture. I don't post it because of copyright issues, since I am drawing faces from off the web. I did pretty good with proportions of the face, except for the jaw line. Gavin has chubby cheeks. One day I'll be better at the proportions, after a couple years of daily sketches :)

Sketches

Technically, I did a daily sketch last night. However, it is not being posted because both Eric and I concur that the sketch of the cute little baby ended up creeeeeeepy. Why can't I draw cute babies. I like babies, I like cute things. I don't understand it.

Also, the daily sketches will be on a pre-scheduled one-week hiatus and will return next week...hopefully with cute drawings and not creepy ones.

Daily sketch 18: male, newborn

Original image.

Analysis: This month I begin the first of a 2-month long theme: The human form at every age. This month I am working on drawing males, starting with this newborn. He's just so cute all bundled up in the towel basket--not that you can see the basket in the sketch. I did borrow a technique from the Tatty Teddy to make the towels look all fuzzy without any shading.

Temporary web gallery up

Web Gallery.

Since my blog is my website at the moment, we decided that I needed to get my gallery up. It's good to get my work out into the world. Maybe it will encourage me to work faster. :)

Enjoy

Illustration Friday: flawed

Illustration Friday.

Theme: Flawed. This is actually my second sketch today...wasn't liking the first one. These were originally going to be plant creatures, one with a missing petal, but they ended up armless-bird/cat/Dr. Suessian creatures of an unknown and slightly confused sort. One has a slight problem...

I've been wanting to do an illustration friday for a while and keep forgetting. I remembered today! yay! Hopefully more to come.

Daily Sketch 17: Hands? ...nope, paws

Original Image.

Analysis: The theme was paws today...I just chose an image that had a bit MORE than paws in it. I like the motion/movement to the sketch and the original image. I had fun with the sketch, and working with interesting shapes (sometimes, i feel like i'm drawing the same face again and again with portraits). I didn't like how the cub's face came out, and i think i messed up with the eyes. I love how the mother's face turned out, even with a crooked nose. We'll also ignore that my vertical line denoting the edge of the picture is anything but vertical.

Daily Sketch 16: Hands on table

Original Image.

Analysis: Hands still suck. I actually don't think I did horrible, except for the fingers (not thumb) of the back hand. They are too small. Because the hands are so complex to draw, shading is minimal. I hope as i get better I learn to shade more in 15 minutes.

Daily Sketch 15: Woman w/ hat II

Original Image.

Analysis: I loved the shadow shapes in this photo, and it's the first one where the majority of the face is dark. VERY dark. The eyes are slightly off, the upper left side of the face needs to be darker, and the lips and face slightly wider. The lips look fuller then I actually drew them, but that was a result of when I was laying in the shading. The fun part is that I did use my electric eraser when i was done to pick out the highlights in the white of the eye and the chin strap.

Daily Sketch 14: Looped fingers

Original image.

Analysis: A friend informed me that I was being lax in drawing hands, so thus we have hands! Perspective on fingers sucks. Plain and simple. I did a decent job on the last three digits of each hand, but lets not get started on the thumbs and forefingers. Bad perspective, bad scale (itty-bitty thumb, large forefinger). Overall, I like the linework in this sketch more then the actual drawing. More hands needed.

Daily Sketch 13: Woman looking up

Original image.

Analysis: I think I know where I'm going wrong; I think I draw the lips way too small for the shape they actually are. I drew out my nice framework with a solid parallelogram from the cheek bones to the chin with just a slight curve at the bottom, and still, the eyes ended up in the middle of the cheek bone line rather than above, as they were supposed to be. Thus her face is shorter and fatter then it is supposed to be. Even still, I redrew the nose 3 times and the eyes 2.5 times and overworked the neckline. I know where the shading is supposed to go once the features are in place...i just need to properly size/align everything now. No wonder some people can spend a lifetime learning to draw the human form.

Daily Sketch 12: Mustache

Original Image.

The original theme for today was Conquistador, but all the images i could find were drawn or painted, so I went with what any good conquistador would have: a mighty fine mustache.

What's cooler than a guy with a black bowtie, black bowler hat, and a 6-part curly mustache?

Analysis: Obviously I had fun with this more-like-30-minute 15 minute sketch. For some reason each time I become fixated on working on the nose first, and I think I start working to fast, leaving me no room to correct. I think this nose should have been wider and maybe a smidgen shorter. And for some reason glasses always hang me up on the shading of the face. I didn't quite get in the laugh lines as well as I wanted.

Daily Sketch 11: Yawn

Original Image.

Analysis: This sketch was a lot of fun. I think I really spent 30-40 minutes on this 15 minute sketch, because I wanted just a little bit more detail. The wrinkles on the nose and eye lids are so delicate to draw/shade, I needed to work with them a bit more to feel satisfied. His nose looks just slightly angled to the left, and the cheeks are a little thin compared to the size of his facial features, but that would be an easy fix. My favorite part is the brow line and forehead on the left. I'd like to get that level of spontaneity and rendering/shading throughout my entire sketch at some point. Sometimes I overwork things too much.

Daily Sketch??

This is a test of the gotta-work-on-something else broadcast system. Your regularly scheduled daily sketch will return tomorrow. Please tune in then. (we apologize for the inconvenience)

Oh, and if you magically know how to turn fire and water into palm trees, please give me a call! (confused? so am i.)

Daily Sketch 10: Blowing out candles

Original Image.

Analysis: This posed an unusual challenge, in that the main source of light is technically from below from the candles, but because of the camera flash, there's a double light source. This resulted in some of the areas that I expected to be dark (upper lids) actually being fairly light. Given more time, and an eraser, I could work on refining the light source. The candles and cake were thrown on the page after the timer was up for reference (he looked strange without it). Right eye is too small, lips are too small, shading where the glasses were is off, because I could mostly just see the reflections of the candles in the glasses. Fairly happy with the initial shading on his jowls, even if they may be a little skinny.