Tiramisu

 Did a bit more work on the bust painting with some halftones. I kind rushed this step but I'm gonna check over everything to make the edges right - or I might even redo it. I didn't have a lot of time today so this is it for now.

WOOOOOAHH IT'S ANIMATED!!!

Well, animated in the frame by frame sense. This is just a bust painting I'm working on, really trying to get the shading as smooth as possible so I'm taking it slowly. I drew the sketch yesterday which took a little less than an hour (again - trying to be as careful as possible). The painting probably took around an hour as well.

Of course, I'm not finished yet, I still have to do some mid tones and passive highlights, as well as defining the Ambient Occlusion shapes some more. I'll finish this soon though, I'm set on it.
 

Do not let me draw hair

 

Been doing some more rendering, actually this is the result of several hours over the course of 3 or 4 days, probably about 5 hours or so. I would've just posted it alone but I didn't work on it today, so it wouldn't really be "sketch-a-day" material. I'm definitely improving my rendering skills a lot, but I should probably make something with the ones I have. 

Also, the guy I drew reminded me a lot of those characters from Hades, lol. Although, I'm not sure which ones, I've never played it before.

I'm scared that painting well takes more time than I think it does

 

Whipped up the drawing and the rendering in about an hour, not too bad if I say so myself, although... I'm coming to the realization that if you want something polished you have to put way more time into it, and reference probably. Although, I don't want to become one of those artists who can't draw anything appealing without reference, so that's why I'm doing this. 

Tomorrow I'm gonna see if I can do better with a full figure with reference, hopefully it'll teach me a few things. Maybe I'll do the digital 'alla prima' approach and go one layer.

Spooky year

 I just drew this to get a post in, took like 3 minutes. The real post is below it, trying to lock down my painting skills again and I'm trying to apply what I learn, been pretty busy drawing so here's what I've been up to.

  I didn't want to just post the bottom one because I thought it'd be disingenuous since I've been working on it here and there for the past few days.

Real head measurements fr fr

 

I was re-evaluating my head drawing process and realized I was going about it wrong. Lately, my method has been to find the center mass of the head, and draw a straight line from it to a circle in perspective, and that spot would be the center of my eyeline (I know that sounds complicated, I will draw a process GIF tomorrow) . I had always assumed that this distance from the center of the head (so the middle green line in the right Loomis head) to the eye was equivalent to the distance from the centerpoint to the side wall of the head - but it is not. 

The actual length from the center to the side of the head is about 4/5ths the length of the centerpoint to the eyeline. I know that doesn't sound too bad, but most of the heads I've been drawing for a while now have been 1/5th too wide, making the head more square and even, which in reality it is more oblong. I will draw out everything I've mentioned tomorrow, but this is a recent revelation I've come crossed that I feel that not many people mention.

Also, for those not in the art scene, those two heads at the bottom are snipped from Andrew Loomis' book, Drawing the Head and Hands, I just drew on top of them with color.

I am considering taking classes.

 I've realized that my current rate of improvement could be a lot better with a teacher, and I'm ready to commit to an art course. I got my car back in working order again and registered so I'll be getting a job soon. Not entirely sure if I will start taking classes though, I'll ask around online and see what people who took the course think of it. I'm thinking CGMA, but I'll look into other options.

Also, I drew this because I'm re-watching Lucky Star, this is what the style is kinda like.