A review of January

  

 

And just like that, the first month of this blog is done, it's kind of scary how fast it went by for me.

Ever since yesterday's post I've been thinking about my art direction, which, has primarily been focused on drawing and perspective since the start of the blog. I have no problems spending time on perspective, or the dynamic sketching course I'm taking, but I have a problem with what I said regarding my focus for drawing.

I never really stated anywhere in this blog so far what kind of artist I aimed to be. I want to become a illustrator for the game (preferably) or film industry. My dream job is to become a splash artist at Riot Games which, I know, set the bar pretty high. Polished illustrations is also my goal in general as an artist... so why am I not spending any time making polished illustrations? I know that I am spending my time on practicing and learning so I can more effectively deliver high quality paintings... but I'm not making any of them...

 

What's the point at getting generally better at skills like drawing (although, it never hurts), if that is not the primary obstacle holding back my progress in illustration? I never looked at a finished illustration of mine and said.. "hmm, my drawing could use more practice", I just heard from professionals that you needed to be good at it. And even then on top of that, how do I know what to focus on in my drawing skills, if I can't find the glaring mistakes because I never make them?

 

This has bothered me not just since this blog started, but for a long time now. If anything this blog has helped me focus and organize my thoughts, regardless if anyone gives feedback, or let alone looks at my blog. 

 

I've also discovered that my drawing energy and my studying energy are not as closely linked as I thought they were. I can study for about an hour and a half before I need a break, but I'm not exactly burnt out completely regarding art. So after I study, I can work on something else to put the knowledge to use.

So, with this understanding, I will try and study whenever my brain can take it and work on illustrations whenever I feel like I have the mental capacity, for the rest of February. These illustrations may take days or even weeks, and will be better eye candy for the blog than just sketches and practice. Just for the record, I still plan on sticking to what I said at the beginning of this blog and working on perspective and dynamic sketching to completion. But I think once I finish the dynamic sketching course I will start focusing more on illustration skills like composition. Of course, along with actually making illustrations, hopefully.

A brief overview of my daily schedule

Imagination sketches.

It's been about a month now, and quite a few things have changed since my first post regarding my daily schedule.

The "ideal" day is waking up at 8:00am and spending the next hour waking up, hygiene, eating breakfast and watch youtube, stuff like that. Then from 9:00 to 10:30 I study the linear perspective course, I finish up whatever video I'm on so this can last to 11:00. By this time, before I start getting hungry, I drink my pre-workout and get in a workout that usually lasts until 12:30. After that I make a protein shake and practice the exercises from the viscom course until 1:30. The rest of the day goes by with me alternating between study and breaks, studying whatever I feel like I need to get better at drawing. My ideal ratio is 1hour 30 minutes of study to 30 minutes break. If I'm not intensely studying and just drawing, I can go on for longer without break.

Now, that's a rare day, what actually happens is something close to the ideal except minus 3 hours from my total studying just because I get distracted, and lately some days it takes me almost up to an hour to get out of bed.

My "actual" day the past two days have been nothing close to my ideal or the above. No studying, no relaxed breakfast, I sometimes forget my protein shake (although I do get my workouts in still). The past two days I have just drawn the entire day, while listening to professional artists on youtube, or just testing out some new pens, or trying to put an idea on paper. Yesterday I think I drew for 12 hours, my hand started hurting and I actually though to myself that I needed to take a break and play some games to relax my hand. Never said that to myself before, but it was nice to realize it soon after, felt like a real artist with real artist problems.

Anyways, I plan on going to returning to my ideal schedule starting tomorrow, I can't waste any time with the perspective course, or just in general. Tomorrow I will post about my review of January regarding my progress with drawing and what I will set for the next month. How I can further improve and in what areas, search for mistakes I make consistently and their solutions, and see if I can change my routine to further develop my drawing skills. A lot of smart talk, and a lot of "we'll see", all of that is definitely more easier said than done.

ballpoint gang

 

Just a bunch of random sketches with ballpoint pens, my favorite is the red shoe in the top left. I'm trying to create visual problems involving form and find solutions to them on my own. Although I think I should be drawing from life more, I'll likely encounter more problems that way and I'll realize it when my drawing looks like crap.

Also, I bought a 60 pack of ballpoint pens made by Bic. Tried putting the image in here to show which ones but the resolution was too big and I couldn't scale it. They are the 'Round Stic - extra life' ballpoint pens, assorted pack of 30 black, 20 blue and 10 red, all for $5 on amazon. They're ok, but they stop working for a bit after using them, although it's not bad like skipping, and along with that decent ink blob control. 6/10 pen, 10/10 value imo.

I'm going to double post in about an hour, it's gonna be a review post over my current "art routine".

drawing skill is improving

 

Any waist down figures are from reference, any head/necks are from imagination. I'm glad I focused on my general drawing skills, I think it's something long overdue for me. I think I'm really drawing with form now.

color sketch

 

 

 

I decided to try out a color sketch, I drew a very quick sketch of the scene then painted underneath. This was an exercise for creating mood by figuring out a color scheme... But I think I have to work on my basic painting skills before I worry about something as a complex as that, I'll see if I can do both.

I will also double post today as to make up for one of my missed days while I was sick, so that will come later tonight.

a true sketch day

 \

I think I spent all day drawing today.

Nice.

I've got a long way ahead of me

So I did the math (probably shouldn't have) and according to my current study routine, it will take nearly 12 more weeks to completely finish the linear perspective master course. My brain isn't tired of perspective yet but it's starting to feel a hint of it. I calculated 12 more weeks by assuming I will watch four lessons a day and then dividing how many videos were left by four (322/4). 

Four isn't too bad considering I've been watching five per day regularly, but I don't think I can do that for much longer, it's mentally fatiguing when I hit the fifth video. During the video I'm just thinking when it will be over, checking the time occasionally. And even then, by the time I'm done with it, I just don't really feel like spending that much time on art afterwards. I've realized that four videos is my happy number, I rarely feel negative during any part of it.

The videos themselves are on average, I would say, 18 minutes long each (it used to be 15), some hit 22 minutes, some only 16. You would think it wouldn't take me 3 hours to get 5 videos done in a day, but I often go back through the video and re-watch, or just pause it so I can draw and follow along the teacher. In case it wasn't made clear before, I draw roughly the same things the teachers do in the drawing lessons step by step, it helps me learn the material.

Also, I started week 4 today of vis-com, and thinks are getting really interesting, not to mention difficult. It's so strange, whenever I draw a form, I can imagine the contour lines on it just fine, but as soon as I draw another form through it my brain just goes ???????. It can't find where the contour (form) on one form stops and goes around the other, it can't mix and match. Sometimes I do this well, often I do not. But I do think if I learn this properly it will be a huge step in my drawing capabilities, so that has inspired me lately.

I'm also going to put an emphasis on straight lines, ellipses, and "deliberate-markmaking" so that my sketches just look cleaner and better in general.

First sketchbook filled

 

More perspective stuff, I suck at circles, but it is more challenging to execute than just plain referencing and scaling. Also, my sketchbook I was using for all my drawings has been filled (9x12in). It was about a third filled already when I started the blog, but about a month for 80 sheets to be filled (and most of that viscom and perspective), I'm happy with that.

more perspective

 

Just some more perspective.

That is all.

perspective stuff

 

Just some perspective stuff I'm working on, about halfway into Unit 3.

That is all.

no one can stop me and my gains

 

Well well well, what do you know, I did manage to work on it some more. (a miracle, truly.)

Only worked on it for a few hours today, but I managed to crank out something kinda cool in my opinion. I knew from the start I didn't want it in three point perspective (because I am incapable atm), but I still wanted to show off the big dude's scale. This meant that I had to make it obvious by showing how small the other two characters are relative to him. I did this by making a rough, shrinking it to work  out the perspective, and then blow it back up and improve the rough with the perspective fixed.

This was done using the things I learned in the perspective course I'm taking, which I am on Unit 3 of right now.

Also, this comp idea was from a very faint remembrance of a fight scene from the anime Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works. I don't remember the scene at all, but I do remember the characters fighting, and that was enough to get me started. Not a huge fan of the story, but the characters are still cool.

THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME AND MY GAINS

Welp, I caught the disease. Yes, *the* virus of the early 21st century.  I started feeling symptoms around noon on the 20th and, within a few hours, was tossing and turning in bed in pain with a roughly 103 degree fever. What made it worse was that same morning, I had just done a hamstring and glute workout which was eccentric focused and brutal. The muscle soreness that came in later that night was amplified to an unreal degree from the muscle aches the virus was causing. It was bad timing, and it made the whole ordeal unnecessarily painful to deal with. 

The 21st was just a blur, me falling in and out of sleep, drinking some water, eating some food, then going back to bed. I was too sick to draw, watch movies, or even watch youtube on my phone. Thankfully I started to get better towards the end of the night, fell back asleep, and woke up feeling somewhat decent.

So, regarding what I'm going to do about the two missing posts (and one missed sketch a day), I'm probably just going to double up on posts for the next two days. 

Also, this was a sketch I had in mind for a bit, but I will be working more on it (I believe so yes).

lazy nezumi goated ngl

Here's a perspective test just to make sure I was learning and retaining the material from the perspective course. It's pretty monotonous stuff, the idea was to have a hallway with scientists analyzing some cube tanks with creatures inside them. Made a sketch using red and then added perspective lines on top using Lazy Nezumi Pro's perspective rulers. It helped a lot, learning it was pretty quick, and I think I'll be using it a lot for perspective setups in the future. Basically all it did was make my lines straight and adhere to the vanishing point I designated.

Some bumps in the road lately regarding my art progress, but I will try my best to sort them out asap. Got around 3 or 4 hours of drawing in today, I will try to hit 6 tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. My boss was talking about how they will most likely need me to come in tomorrow to pick up a shift, if that happens I won't be able to hit the goal, so we'll see how it goes.

 

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

 

 

First post I missed :(

 

Technically speaking, I'm still solid on the sketch-a-day challenge. This was an attempt at character design I worked on for a couple hours yesterday (and worked on only yesterday). It was in my folder labeled 18, ready to be posted and everything. I don't even remember turning my alarms off this morning, I had 3 of them set so I wouldn't miss my first in-person class for college but they were all turned off... spooky.

 

And the character... pretty uninspired in my opinion. Kinda just went in head first with no thought behind it thinking "I'm gonna make a character", but this is just bland. Can't give what you don't have.

Next time I'll try thinking and putting together a character before visually designing one first.

Also, this post is pretty early in the day, as this is going to be my makeup post for January 18th, there will be another one tonight as per usual.

right when it's time to go full speed again

 

Unfortunately I didn't get to study much today, the website hosting the content I was learning from was down all day so I just did some more painting instead. This is a render test I painted in Photoshop, it looks real to me but maybe that's because I'm not experienced enough yet. Hopefully the website will be available again soon.

and even more blobs

 

Forgot my sketchbook at home, so I did these when I got back from work. Tomorrow I will be studying full throttle again.

That is all.

more blobs

 

more blobs 

that is all.

blob drawings

 

Here's a bit more rendering I did for the assignment, I did something I didn't usually do and added a bit of value to represent the blush of the cheeks using a multiply layer. It definitely added some feel to the cheeks and overall smoothness and realness to the face so I'm glad I did it.

 

Today I took a little bit of a break, didn't really get in all that much drawing or painting done compared to the past four days. Somewhere around 2 hours today I think, I felt like if I pushed myself more I would burnout soon.

Also, I started week two of the vis-com course and this lesson is way more fun and engaging (i actually get to draw something) so I will be doing this a lot for the next two days whenever I have downtime at work, as I probably won't do much outside of it.

Here's some of the viscom stuff:

 

You're actually not supposed to draw hard angles/edges in these exercises, that's just me getting carried away.

I don't even main riven

 

I didn't actually get any progress on yesterday's sketch, just wanted to move on to something that I could test myself with. Tomorrow I will start the second week of vis-com, which I'm excited for, so I'll post about how that goes. Been chewing a lot out of the perspective course recently (just started unit 3/21) but I think I'm going to start slowing down on it, perspective for me isn't really all that fun and engaging but it is important.

This is a an assignment I thought up for myself revolving around facial expressions. Also this is Riven from league of legends who I'll be using for reference along with some expression references.

That is all.

perspective yes I agree

 

 

Decided to try out some ideas with the perspective I was learning currently, this is actually just guesstimated two point perspective which I haven't gotten to yet (already know 2 point but not 'in-depth'). Focused on getting the perspective right and while it look's a little strange with the eyes and mouth, whenever I flipped the canvas there was no real oddities at this stage. The girl on the left's head however looked a lot different before, but when I started thinking in terms of perspective I realized the outside of right side of the face (her right) was sticking too far out. So I brought it back in and got this result, I'll work on it a bit more tomorrow.

2d composition is 3d chess

 

 

 

Happy to say that I did a good amount of studying today, about 7 hours worth of work. Would've gotten more done but I spent a bit of time taking breaks, errands like groceries and changing my car oil, and getting a workout in (which went well too). Overall nothing but productivity today.

These are the results of a few hours worth of studying Framed Ink, most of them thought up by me, but a few are straight out copies from the book. All of them based on concepts from the book of course, I'm not that smart yet.

Reading this book is one thing, copying and understanding the explanations, and coming up with your compositions based on top of them are another. I'm sure anyone could open this book, read the explanations, go "yeah, that sounds right, makes sense", and never attempt to apply it right after reading it. It's what I did when I found out about this book many years ago, and I'm 100% positive that I did not grasp them the way I do now.

By no means am I saying that I just suddenly got good at composition, but I understand a lot more than I used to for sure. 100% because I worked the ideas out in my own way and found that it was much more complicated than just understanding the effect of a composition. What I learned now compared to back then was how to make the composition, not just understand the effect of it.

Each of these were difficult, no matter how simple they seem. It probably took me 15-30 minutes each just to rack my brain on how to arrange the shapes, but I think they will pay off. Maybe I just feel like I know more, but we'll see pretty soon if that's the case.

Also, on top of these, I worked on my perspective as well. Took a break from it for a couple of days because things were starting to get difficult without the rulers and compass, but those came in earlier today and got back on track.

quality post... in disguise???

 

 

Now, I know what I said, that today was gonna be a post that was worth looking at. However, reality is often disappointing, and instead I have a rough sketch that took about 10 minutes to make.

 

 

 

Nah, just kidding, this is going to be the sketch I work on for the next couple of days to "limit test" myself with. It looks like hot garbage because of the brush I was using. It's an 100% opaque brush, with no flow and shape dynamic range brush that I made in Photoshop. I made it to feel like my Staedtler felt-tip pigment liner's that I've been using for my vis-com class. Any non-fully opaque lines you see is because of my eraser.

Also, I'm on day 5 of vis-com, counted up all my practice pages and I'm totally around 20 pages full in my sketchbook of just lines, arcs, waves, and ellipses. The results are pretty instantaneous, whenever I do them again the next day all of my strokes are a little bit more refined, so I'm finally getting the hang of these felt-tip pens.

I got a little sucked back into studying painting today, even though it wasn't my focus, but a little painting couldn't hurt.

more box people, and a bit of a long post.

  

Worked another long shift again, managed to get some studying done along with the daily vis-com homework and some more box people practice. I think the box exercises are really helping me with my sketching ability, I haven't seen drawing improvement this fast from practice in a while. Of course, these don't look nice or interesting at all, but the sketches I doodle when I'm at work show a lot more depth than they did before for sure. Just a bit difficult to transform the box people into real people, gotta carve out all those edges and corners.

Anyways, me and my boss made a deal regarding my hours. I asked to leave by the 17th because I wanted to have more time for my studying asap, and this was about a week ago. Recently however they said if time is what I needed, they offered me only working the Saturday/Sunday shifts for the next two weeks instead of working 5 days a week. They're gonna be long shifts, but at least it doesn't break my day up throughout the week and exhaust me often, the only catch is that I would stay by the 23rd, but that was fine with me.

So with that being said, I'm going to have a lot more time for art starting tomorrow. I plan on adding composition related resources to my studying routine, but at the moment only Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre comes to mind, tomorrow I'll look around the internet and see if there's anything else I can find.

Lastly, something's been bugging me about this blog, it may just be me but it seems I haven't put anything really remotely interesting on here in terms of art. It's all just bland studies and lazy sketches (apart from the first two or three days of posts). So, that also changes starting tomorrow, I want to make actual art from ideas I feel inspired by and not upload cut and dry studies and lazy sketches, and instead put up stuff with a bit of elbow grease in it.

However, that is A LOT of talk coming from someone like myself, who seriously lacks credit in the creative work department, so we'll see how well the execution for that goes tomorrow, it will definitely be the most challenging thing I do. Can't stay in the comfort zone forever though.

tonight is the night

 

As I am typing this, I've been awake for 21 hours now, and I'm ready to pass out on my bed. Today I worked the long shift and managed to rough out this sketch real quick, I was testing myself to see if I was grasping the concepts of the perspective course I'm taking and I think my drawings are starting to show it. It's not like I didn't know perspective, but studying it and applying to every drawing I make just makes my work feel more real. And yes I'm still cranking out those vis-com lines circles and whatnot.

Also, tonight is the night, I'm going to pass out, wake up firmly at 9:00am, and for the foreseeable future make that my wake-up time and ingrain it in my brain, I'm sick of not having a consistent sleep schedule.

lazy post, need sleep

Quick sketch I did with box forms and whatnot, took like 3 minutes. I stayed awake for 20 hours, slept for four, then woke up to post this. I think after today my sleep rhythm will be back on track, also I've still been working on those classes so this isn't all I've done (my posts usually never are). 

I'm gonna go crawl back to bed.

the grind starts now

 

 

 

So I decided to set a plan for myself and work on Erik Olson's perspective course and Peter Han's dynamic sketching course until completion. This is mainly to work out any insecurities I have left about my understanding of drawing techniques and/or perspective. The last couple of months I have been focused mostly on painting with light along with value and composition studies so this will be a nice break from those.

These drawings are from the lessons of week 1 and week 2 of Peter Han's course, I am going to work on week 1 (along with the perspective course) for a whole week just like I would as if I was actually in the class before I move onto the next week. I've done some exercises like these before when I was first learning to draw, and I'm much better than I was then but man I overestimated my skill in these for sure. Hopefully I can see good results soon from returning back to the basics.

box figure studies

Some cut and dry figure studies using only box forms (for the most part). I used quickposes.com for the references with 120 seconds using the Warriors category. Initially I thought I could knock these out without a lot of difficulty but I never even got to the legs on more than half of them. I realized that I actually didn't do box form studies in the past as much as I thought I did and actually ended up using a crutch by backtracking to figuring out the gesture in order to place the boxes properly.

For example the figure on the very left of the middle row, it's the most pleasing drawing out of all of them for me, but even then I cheated a little using curves for the head and hair to get a grip on the perspective, and there's a few more of them that ended up like that too but for the most part I stuck to boxes.

Overall I think I learned a lot in 30 minutes and want to do more of these until I get sick of them, right now my studying resources are Erik Olson's perspective course, George Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy, and very soon I plan on studying a lot more Vilppu and see how he approaches box forms in figure drawing.

man, waking up at 4pm is not ideal

 

Tried to do composition or something but this was a really low effort drawing with very little planning, really not happy how it turned out now my day is ruined. Also, my boss said I could take off tomorrow too so I'm taking that offer, feel kinda bad for not putting more effort into art on my free day, but tomorrow for sure.

you can title posts?????

 

 

So in Blogger you can find the exact time someone posted by hovering over the date with your mouse. The first two posts of this blog have been both at exactly 11:59  PM which worries me about the longevity of this challenge since I have literally been 1 minute away from failing the first two days, haven't felt stress like that in a while.

 

This is because my hours have a little over doubled since two weeks before Christmas and my hours are just now returning to what they were before. Tomorrow is my first off day in a while (apart from Christmas and new years) so I will be making a lot of progress then. I'm just working retail but those long hours of standing really drain me.

 

So because of all that here's a quick sketch and some more rendering that I did on the angry sword lady, that's all I can get out of me today. I will now drink tea, take a shower and go to sleep, good night.

 

Decided to try out a character sketch to see if I could make anything interesting, turns out getting better at art does not equal becoming more creative. Next time I will try to make it less obvious that I did not want to draw hands at all. She has sword arms, and is really angry, that can't make for a good combo. 

Hope she doesn't run with those. 

Also I did a bit of rendering too which ended up being faster than the sketch. The process goes from sketch, to mask layer, local colors, ambient occlusion, key light rendering, and finished up with a bit of specular and reflective, mostly on the face.

What better way to start off the year than with a Yuno and Yukki sketch?

The purpose of this blog is to sketch and upload once a day, whether it takes twenty seconds or twenty hours, it's all fair game. Probably should be called an art-a-day blog or something, but this is fine.

I'm running it down to the minute now before I miss my first day so I can't say much, but I'll share more about who I am in future posts.

But I will say this now, if you can't stand these two characters from the show Future Diary, then erase this blog from your mind entirely, because you will definitely be seeing them again.