Staircase to nowhere

 Trying to do a diagram a day which usually takes a little over an hour, depending how complex it is. This one took me longer than usual since I tried to make the lines really precise and accurate, probably about two hours. The top-facing planes are shaded in red, the ones above the horizon line are not visible realistically unless the whole thing was see-through, which is what I did here.

Starting to get back into working out again lately, I think I worked out 5 days out of the past 7 so that's a start. Not that I wasn't working out before, but it was only a couple times a week.

A fimilar view

Didn't think you would see this again now would ya?

I don't know where or when I stopped by working on perspective, but it's gained my interest again and I want to finish Erik Olson's perspective course preferably by the end of this year. I have roughly 40% left to do and I don't want to leave any knowledge on the table after moving on to other art theory. So, expect to see more of this, and alot more drawing in general, since that's where my interests lie at the moment.

Also, check out squarepusher's track, tundra, found it today and I really dig it.

Bacteria caught me lackin

So it turns out it was indeed paronychia, which just means infection of the fingernail. The swelling didn't go down any while I was asleep so I went to the clinic and they gave me an antibiotic, so now my finger won't go into self-destruct mode. About 8 hours after taking the antibiotic the swelling finally went down and the pressure with it, meaning I can actually use my middle finger for long periods of time again. Tomorrow I'll be back on the usual schedule, it was a nice break actually, was going brain-dead with the studying again.

Glad I went though, found out that this could actually spread to the bone, and that they would have to chop off the infected parts of the bone so it wouldn't spread further. That is super rare and worst case scenario, but I'm not trying to permanently damage my drawing hand let alone my body. I know any infection can get serious, but I never knew my freaking skeleton could get infected, whole new level of scary.

What do we have here

Would ya lookie here a box full of nothing, much like yesterday's post.

I haven't done much drawing, maybe 3 hours max each day for the past two days. My finger swelled up a little more before I went to bed last night and it's the same size ever since. It did so with some pain but lately the pain has gone away by probably 70%, only hurts when I press on something with a little pressure. Hoping that's because it's healing and not loosing all feeling. I use my mouse and pen with my middle finger stuck out so I am in a constant state of flipping something off, a true reflection of my current mood I feel.

So, hopefully the swelling or pain improves by tomorrow, because if it doesn't I will be making an appointment with a doctor, not trying to grow a second thumb, which is almost the size it's at now.

Ouch

 

So my middle finger on my right hand is swollen, sketched a rough depiction to show. Would be fine if it wasn't my drawing hand, but it is so now I'm suffering. I think it's an infection so that's gonna be fun to deal with, hopefully it's just an ingrown nail but fingernails don't get those nearly as often as toenails I think. Not gonna be using it for much tomorrow, it's been hurting for the past two days, but today it increased by this much compared to my regular finger. Let's hope it doesn't get serious somehow, god forbid.

WHAT ARE THOOOOSSEE

I was originally going to make the title of this post, "what are toes", but didn't think that would land. Forgive me for showing you this, I just wanted to show my efforts, even if the results were disastrous. 

Please forgive my transgressions.

Also, I am NOT into this, just to be clear.

Gestural thinking

Did a lot of 4fun drawing today, the studying grind will commence tomorrow. Speaking of grinding, my dynamic sketching warmup seems even worse than it did two days ago, now that's progress.

Spring cleaning

Was up and about basically all day, cleaned every square inch of my room. We also had to use some pesticide because the bugs looked like they were gonna be a problem this year, which is weird because we haven't had a problem with them since we got the house. Bummer too, because today was mother's day but we had a lot to take care of. We made up for it by watching a movie and going out somewhere to eat, came back late at night and didn't get to make up the bed until midnight. Had to put my setup back together and now we're here, tired and too lazy to draw anything good.

Speaking of which, I will be very surprised if someone knows what this is off the top of their head.

feel the form, man.

 I didn't want to post another floating head today, so I'm just going to post some dynamic sketching roughs in here. I was playing with a lot of brush settings today and I think I finally found a pen brush I really like. Most important thing I learned though is that it doesn't matter what brush you use, but the settings definitely can make it easier on your hand, makes it easier on your hand, with pen pressure and whatnot. Also, the line practice page was just the usual 8x over on each line, but on digital instead. Way more difficult than traditional, but this was before finding my comfortable brush settings, so we will see what those do for me tomorrow.

I'm thinking about starting a new hobby. It's not really something out of left field, but it may be a little surprising for some. I'll share more about it sometime this week, though I will say it is kind of making me nervous haha.

Kinda what I was talking about

 

Basically, if we fit the hair shape into a sphere, the hair can never fall out of the outermost curve of the sphere, as shown with the green dot. Of course, hairstyles are not perfectly spherical, but it serves as a good base to work off of. I added some to the backside of the hair because of this reason. Still messing around with anime faces, when I will get back to the realistic ones I have no clue, enjoying my time with these for now.

Comic girls was 10/10

 

Well, this wasn't what I was referring to from yesterday, although I did use some of the color theory I learned recently... but I also wasn't to strict on it today. Actually, today I just did some studies on faces and what not, I will share what I learned recently tomorrow.

Oh, I did finish watching Comic Girls today though. Gave that a 10/10 from me, I think the show hit all of the marks it wanted for itself, and delivered on the story/message 100%. Non-artists probably wouldn't rate it as high, but for me it was awesome.

All hail Kaos-Chan, gotta draw her sometime.

Now THIS looks anime

 

I know I've been gone again, but I have good news this time, I have spent a lot of time improving and putting serious hours in. So much so that I was staying up past the post time and missing it all because of the studying I've put in. We're doing roughly 6 hours of solid studying on average per day recently, but mileage isn't the key thing here, I've made a lot of advancements instead by racking my head about some theories I were having and I came to some conclusions.

I can't list them in detail here so I will tldr it, basically, I got a way firmer grasp on color/light theory now, and my drawing skills as well, specifically gesture. Now, gesture I was making a lot of improvements in, but basically regarding form, gesture is everything, and if you get it wrong, you're probably not going to draw the form properly/as you intended, as gesture is just a 1 dimensional summerization of whatever form you draw. So if you can't get that right, chances are you're not getting the 2D right (shape) or even 3D (form).

Actually it's kinda applicable here too, despite it's sketchy look. Basically I thought, if the hair just act's as a sphere around an axis, then no matter how the sphere turns, the farmost edge stays in roughly the same spot on the paper. However the head/hair is not a 100% complete sphere, as the hair has some back end to it, so whatever plane of the head turns towards us, we add hair shapes to represent the hair that also moved towards us.

I know that paragraph sounded like a bunch of over analyzing, but the principle is what matters, which guides that train of thought. Also, I don't want to be just mouthing on about something I don't know is 100% true, so I will show you what I mean in tomorrow's post.

Actually I didn't really draw that much today

Alright, I would be lying if I said I improved today, so were gonna count this as a rest day. I did some drawing but it was between 1-2 hrs worth, so tomorrow will count as the 7th improvement day. I had to take care of some things today, on top of waking up late, that's just how it is.