The Best and Worst Sketching of December

Oh, all right, I'll bring back the bad sketches!  No, nobody has actually asked me to bring them back; nobody ever posts any comments remember? You're allowed to if you want to though, I don't bite. Well, my blog doesn't at least...  And yes someone did comment on the last post, but I'm married to her so it doesn't count ;).  Anyway, I just felt guilty for not showing them.  One of the things I decided way back when I started the blog was that I would show a good sampling of everything I did, good and bad, so I'm letting myself down.  You probably don't care, probably see them and say "Why'd he post that? It looks like I spider sneezed on the page and then died!"  before moving on.  Really I have no idea why anyone would read the blog that by it's very concept is admitting it's full of dreadful pictures, but you do, and I'm happy for that.  And since you do read it (presumably) and look at the pictures (hopefully) I'd better post something for you to look at.

Figure and Perspective Practice
We'll start with the Figure Perspective practice this time, although now it's Figure and Perspective practice thank you very much. Yeah, that "and" makes all the difference doesn't it? Not much to say about this that the images can't say themselves. I still need to work on hands and feet, especially from certain angles, but there is some improvement in them shown here I think. I also came to the realization that people do have another half on the opposite side of their chests and abdomen, so I started sketching people from behind - only one of these was any good, and it's down in the bottom left - I think it may be my favorite single image of the month in fact - except the hand, which I made a bad mess of. No reference used for any of these by the way, though I'll have to start using some soon for this or I'll just continue making the same mistakes over and over.

From Reference
Sketches from reference. The only one I recall where it came from was the profile of the girl on the right - that's from Stockness on DeviantArt. It's recognisable, but not terribly good, mostly because I made a mess of her eye I think (I adore this stock shot though, and another side shot of her in her gallery, so don't be surprised if she pops up again sooner of later). And yes, I do occasionally draw men, as you can see here.

Free Sketching
Actually, I think the balance of guys to girls in my sketches is starting to work itself out, as this image shows. Yes the girl in the lower right was supposed to seem basically anorexic (not a look I like, but interesting to draw). Yes, that is another elf/sprite/fairy in the top left, and the guy next to her with the top hat is the Doctor. A sketch for a painting I was planning, and may yet do one day. Yes, I was frustrated when drawing that scribble in the lower left, I still like it, so there.

Sketch Faliures
So these are not the worse sketches I did this month as I decided that actually showing the *worst was pointless since something that's scribbled down inside of 10 seconds is never going to be good, likewise something that's just an exploration for something else that I didn't actually intend to be any good. So the straight up bad has now been replaced by the most disappointing. These are works where what I had in my head just refuses to translate to the page, or where it was all going so well and then went terribly wrong, or where I just utterly forgot some basic principle of anatomy or perspective or proportion and... well, you get the idea.
I actually do like a couple of these as they show potential, but they are not, in and of themselves, remotely good.  By the way, you can't really enlarge this one, but the rest are embiggable.

Until the next time! Which will hopefully be in a few days.