The Best and Worst Sketching of July

Life's funny, full of little jokes. After my last post saying I wouldn't be taking any commissions for a while I remembered I'd already told someone I would do one for them. So I had to do that one obviously. That's done, and there should be a post about it this coming weekend. So with that out of the way I renewed my vow, and then had an offer I couldn't refuse, so I'm probably doing another. You won't hear more about that one for a while, but really I quite literally could not refuse it without kicking myself later.

So with all that going on, as well as other things (New kittens in the house, son being sad because his best friend's moved to Canada, wife starting college in a week etc) I've barely done any sketching so far this month. Luckily last month I was a mite more productive...

Free Sketching

I'm really going to try and get through this one with a minimum of writing, honestly (TOO LATE!), but I think I should point out the ones I really quite like. The Two guys to the left of the Troll (lower left) came out pretty well, as did the guy to their upper right (past the sketchy woman). The girl almost in the middle, who's darker than those surrounding her is pretty good too (and done in Charcoal for a change), while the rest are varying states of "not terrible".

Figure and Perspective Practice

Nothing outstanding here, but some fairly solid ones. I'm quite pleased with the poses on the guy and the girl (and the dog) in the top right corner, as well as the bowing figure below them. There's also a quite dynamic looking figure over on the left hand side; very sketchy, but I like the weight and balance of it. Have I mentioned recently that I don't copy these from other pictures? I think I need to reiterate it on occasion for people who don't regularly read the blog. Sometimes they're based on the memory of a picture, but usually they're just made up. Same with the free sketching.

From Reference

These on the other hand are most definitely based on photos. The two girls were based on a couple of thumbnails on pinterest, the headless chap in the middle is from some old photo of a bodybuilder back in the 1940's and in the lower right it's Jean Luc Picard (but not a very good one. Charcoal again though).

If you're wondering why some of the sketches look choppier than usual it might be down to the new scanner. It's a lot harder to clean up the general noise of the paper grain that it was on the old one, so some of them still have "dust" around them. It's pretty minor, but if you notice it that's why it's there.

Oh Dear

Okay, so I though this one came out really well, right up until I finished it and stood back.  At that point I gasped in horror because I'd buggered up her eye in the most amateurish way possible - one is far higher up than the other.  She's a Frankenstein's monster!  I did worse sketches in July, but this was far and away the most disappointing.  I've not even cleaned the image up all that much, so you get to see that paper grain I was talking about.  Blech!

And for this month that's all you're getting. The focus posts are probably moving to another post (at least this month they are), so watch out for that in a few days.

Oh, all right, have a bad sketch of one of the new kittens done in Sketchbook Pro (which I bought last week but have barely used).