The Best and (Mostly) Worst Sketching of February

Well, I suppose it's time I just suck it up and post. I actually prepped all these for posting last weekend and I've been putting off blogging about them because I'm not terribly happy with... well, most of them really. There are a couple of nice pieces though, so I may as well share them. Prepping them took a lot of time last weekend, which was funny because I thought I hadn't been terribly productive last month (I didn't sketch at all for at least a week as I was so disappointed in what I was producing). Turned out I had 12 fairly densely packed pages to scan and sift through. Shame most of it was dross...

Figure and Perspective Practice
I found I wasn't really practicing perspective much last month, although I did do a fair number of figures. I really need to get back to working on the perspective, because as you will see later, I've found I'm having difficulties. I think I'll work from some photos with extreme perspectives to help. Anyway, this is avoiding the subject at hand (which you'll note there are a couple of). No real standouts - I like the girl in the lower right (other than her feet - must work on feet again) and the pose and hand on the girl in the top left is pretty good I guess (note: no feet). Not much else to say really.

Sketching from Reference
My focus this month was profiles, since I'm horrible at them (you'll see more in a minute), so lots of profiles. Here's an interesting twist though, two of these pictures weren't drawn from photos, but rather my memory of the photos (or at least the pictures I based on them). Amusingly the pencil Emo girl at the bottom there turned out better than the one directly from the photo (the inked one). The girl next to her at the bottom will turn up soon in a speedpainting roundup - I painted the speedpaint first, then this was drawn from memory the next day. The others are so, so - The girl in the pirate hat might have been more finished, but my mechanical pencil ran out of lead and I never went back to it. DA Stock was used for all except EmoGirl; One Two Three Four

Focus Sketching
So, concentrating on profiles and pictures from a three-quarter angle rather than head on. Still need to work on it, but things are better than they were a month ago I suppose. Still having real trouble with the placement of the eyes and the depth of the back of the cranium I think.

Free Sketching
The usual hodge podge of pretty good and middle of the road. There's really not much to comment on here, except to note that I quite like the girl in the lower right despite how rough looking she is, and the figure in the lower right turned out quite well but could have been better (mostly her arm is awful).

Bad stuff
Really, it's AWFUL. The head in the cap is rotten, the hunched seated figure seems to be from three different perspectives at once, the figure directly beneath that is... stretched? Ugly anyway. The figure in the center at the bottom is okay except for that one leg that makes no sense, and the vampire guy/girl/thing... I have no words, really, there's no excuse for something that crap.

Let's hope this month works out better...