Belated Sketching for September

It's been a while hasn't it? I skipped the first whole month since the blog began (actually closer to two months at this point if I'm honest), and I've not done much art in order to say "Well yeah, but check this out!" either. You may be thinking I've been resting on my laurels after that book cover, or that I've just been slacking. Those in the second group would be closer to the truth; I've totally been slacking, but not without reason.

Some of you already know that the beginning of October (and the end of September) is a particularly hard emotional time for me, and this year saw an anniversary that made it especially so. Before I could get over that little funk there was another emotionally trying time (Mostly for my wife, but obviously what effects her rubs off on me to some extent), and then my Son was sick, and then my wife was sick, and now I'm sick - but it's now more irritating than "feel like death", hence my finally writing a post.

So the emotional stuff basically nuked my inspiration and drive so I did very little for the month. I did enough to get some more posts, but no speedpaints and not much sketching. There goes my one speedpaint a week intent - I'll get back on it soon. Anyway, before all this I did scan in September's sketching, so I have that to show at least...

Free Sketching
I may as well start with some reasonably good stuff. These are the best general sketches I did back in September. If the girl with the straight blonde hair looks familiar it's because I realised afterwards that I had inadvertently drawn her looking quite a bit like the girl in this post, except there she was drawn from a reference, and here just a random sketch that looks amazingly like her. Kinda creepy that. Other than that just another month of general sketching. I do quite like the blending on the chap in the top left, although her looks slightly creepy (the hair doesn't help either).

From Reference
These ones are taken from reference. Unfortunately the three on the right are takn from Pins on pinterest that were un-credited and "uploaded by user" so I don't know where they came from - they're just lose interpretations anyway, I don't think they look much like the original photos. The girl on the left is based on Megan Morris, but is also a poor likeness. Megan was on America's Next Top Model once and got kicked off early. I think she was robbed personally.

Focus Task 1
Focus this month is profiles. This was for the Open Art Group, but that's slowly fading away unfortunately - I'll have to keep doing these sort of things just for myself (now I'm getting back into it that is). These aren't in order, so you can't really see the improvement through the month unfortunately. My favorites are 'Asian looking science guy' and cap girl (both on the second row).

Focus Task 2
I also did some arms. I find arms abnormally difficult to draw, so I gave them some focus time. Most of them are wrong, but I think they're an improvement on what I was drawing before. Some of the hands turned out okay too. Since I've not drawn much since this I've probably forgotten everything I learned. So it goes.

Gesture Drawing
Just some gestures. Highly variable quality. Nothing much to add except that I haven't done any since. I must rectify this shortly.

Sketching Failures
I think the awfulness speaks for itself don't you. Basically revolting.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try and get what little I did in October compiled soon, and there's also the painting class I'm taking to talk about (plus my terrible paintings to show of course), and after that I should be basically back on track. We're planning to visit my Wife's family for Thanksgiving, and that usually gets some dreadful sketching out of me, so that's something to look forward to. Until then, excelsior!